2024 is now here, and with the New Year brings resolutions and new goals to achieve. It is also a time for reflection and looking back on the year previously and assessing the highlights and lowlights. As we start the New Year, Leicester Tigers are now just over the halfway point in their season and currently still in contention in all three competitions they entered into – however they still have question marks over their progress. So how are they getting on?
Well the truth is that they are a pretty hard team to judge properly as they are a team of contradictions. Success has come in the Premiership Cup as they have reached the Semi-Finals, with the side due to play Ealing in February. Their first two Champions Cup fixtures have seen two victories including a famous win in Paris over Stade Francais with a heavily rotated side. However domestically, they sit in 7th position and nine points off table-toppers Northampton Saints, with five wins and five defeats from their 10 games played.
Disrupted Starters
On the domestic front, their form has been mixed as the table shows. However delve a little deeper and the picture becomes a bit more complex. There is no doubt that Leicester had a slow start to the season with only a single victory to their name in the first five weeks of the season. However that does not tell the whole tale, as for the majority of the first four fixtures,Tigers were one of the worst affected clubs by the World Cup in the division, with 10 players away. In addition Anthony Watson and Jack Van Portvliert were injured whilst on International Duty, with Leicester then suffering further injuries to key players just as pre-season ended.
As a result, Leicester started the league season with a senior squad availability of circa 60%, whilst playing teams that were much less affected by World Cup call-ups and injuries. In addition, they have a brand new coaching group for the season, led by Dan McKellar, bringing in new ideas, philosophies and ways of training and playing. As a result, Tigers were not as settled as other clubs have been, making it a tough double hurdle that they have had to work with.
None of this can, nor should be used as an excuse, especially when the performance away at Bristol was so poor that they never gave themselves a chance of victory. However it is a pretty major mitigation for their early-season form, as they played opposition with stronger and better players on the field. Any consideration of Leicester has to take that into account to say that the first few weeks of the season were not a true indication of the team’s capabilities.
Concentration Issues
Whilst Leicester have been more affected than others, they are guilty of being their own worst enemy themselves. The afore-mentioned Bristol away game in the season opener is a prime example of this. The first half saw some of the worst rugby played by a Leicester team since the dark days of 11th placed finishes. Whilst the second half improved, it was still well below anything like an acceptable performance. Across 80 minutes, Tigers were sloppy, error strewn, inaccurate, poorly disciplined with no sign of any cohesion in attack or defence, meaning the side were well-beaten, despite a late rally making the scoreboard look healthier.
Whilst these things do and can happen, the important thing is that they do not get repeated and become a pattern of behaviour. Sadly, Leicester have been guilty in this department. In the second quarter of the home Champions Cup game against Stormers, the Tigers turned a contest that they were fully in control of, into a desperate dash for redemption, falling behind against the storming South Africans due to severe sloppiness. Two weeks later, a strong side then went down to Exeter and put in a performance that was the repeat of Bristol, going down to a disappointing 29-10 loss.
Trying to locate what causes these blips and why they happen, must be something that keeps McKellar awake at night, especially when the build up to the games have gone so well. Tigers went into Bristol off the back of a strong Premiership Cup campaign and went into Exeter off the back of five straight victories. It feels like there is a concentration issue within the players – when they know they cannot afford a defeat, for example Saints at home in November – they can come out and put in a strong performance for 80 minutes as they know they have to win otherwise the season is over. However it feels that when the players are not fully concentrated, that is when their standards slips and they put in such poor performances. Thankfully for Leicester, their league position is one that fully concentrates their mind as they now know they cannot afford many more defeats, if any.
Reasons for Positivity?
With the slow start in the league, lowly league position and disappointing defeats to Bristol and Exeter, you could be forgiven for thinking that the mood at Leicester is fully negative. However there are still reasons to be positive, and for thinking that a good season is still a possibility.
For starters, there can be no proper analysis of where Leicester are at under McKellar, based upon the first four league games, as the squad was not fully resourced. The Australian has now had his whole squad back from the Quins game onwards, giving eight games in total. In that time, Leicester have won six in both the league and Champions Cup, including five in a row, giving a win percentage of 75%. That is a winning record that would have equalled Saracens’ record in top spot last season, and took Leicester to the top two positions for the vast majority of the last 10 seasons.
Eight games is not a big enough sample size to say with any assurance that Tigers are definitely a top two side, however it is a decent enough indication to allow us to say Leicester possess a strong winning record; suggesting that when they have their whole squad together they win more often than not to put them up there as one of the better teams in the league.
Play-Off’s still on?
Now games are not won by statistics, they are decided on the pitch, clearly. However statistics can be used as evidence or they can they be used to spot a trend. Therefore we can use these figures to paint a picture of how the season could unfurl for Tigers. For example, with the internationals coming back into the group after Round 4 of the Premiership, in reality it gave the club an 14 game season. Applying that current win percentage of 75% against those 14 games gives an answer of 10.5, suggesting Leicester would win 10 or 11 of that mini-season. Combine that with the away win at Bath and you have 11 or 12 wins in the season overall, enough to suggest that Tigers will be in the Play-Off spots at the end of the season or very close.
Leicester actually have eight league games left, so again when running the current win percentage against the remaining games, we are provided with an answer of six, leaving Leicester with eleven wins in total for the season. Looking at the table as it stands today, that would mean Tigers are again either in the top four spots, or very close if they do miss out. Either way, the current trend, based on the last eight games where McKellar has had his full squad to work with, indicates that Leicester are still in Play-Off contention.
Conclusions
Tigers, both the coaching and playing staff still have to keep improving week on week and keep striving to be better. Their trademarks of their game - defence, forward dominance and intelligent kicking have been overall strong, however their attacking prowess has not got going. It has flickered at times, however it remains a work in progress. Leicester need this to fire, as they cannot fully rely on their fundamentals to win games. They need more strings to their bow, and to improve their red-zone efficiency to obtain that killer instinct in order to win more games.
Overall, whilst there are understandable reasons to be glum about the Tigers’ season so far, there is still enough evidence to show that a good season is still possible. However, that does come with caveats. Leicester have to stay at the current winning percentage, meaning they cannot afford many defeats from here on out. That means they have to stay fully concentrated between now and the end of the season, not allowing concentration levels to dip as the evidence suggests that ensures a drop in standards, which they cannot afford. As the New Year starts, it is still all to play for, for Dan McKellar and his men.