How Mr Grumpy became Mr Happy
IN a week dominated by the game’s tectonic shift towards the cult of the individual, with Antoine Dupont, World Rugby‘s Player of the Year, and Bristol-bound Ellis Genge making the biggest headlines, Leicester head coach Steve Borthwick was extolling the virtues of teamwork.
It was a shrewd move by Borthwick given that Genge, who has been a fierce and committed Tigers captain since the coach entrusted him with the responsibility at the start of the season, was just about to drop the bombshell that he was returning to his home town after five years at Leicester.
With loosehead Genge joining flyhalf George Ford at the Welford Road exit at the end of this campaign – depriving Borthwick of two England internationals at the epicentre of the unbeaten ten-match run that has Leicester fans salivating in anticipation of a league title – the coach was in desperate need of a diversion.
In the circumstances, singing the praises of the collective strength of the club’s young squad, fresh from a landmark away win over Bordeaux- Begles in last weekend’s European Cup opener, as well as lauding Tigers fans for their indispensable support, could not have been timelier.
The same applied to an intriguing shift in Borthwick’s approach to the media, which was tantamount to a one-man communications revolution.
The taciturn, sometimes obstructive approach for which Borthwick earned a reputation during his eight years as an assistant to Eddie Jones with Japan, and then England, was nowhere in sight. Instead, he gave an upbeat, open assessment of what he has done to get Leicester from the bottom of the table to the top.
It was a breath of fresh air. It spoke of an ambitious coach who has grabbed the chance to be his own boss for the first time with both hands, and reaped the rewards of backing his own ability and judgement by putting the collapsed giant of English club rugby not just back on its feet, but outstripping the rest of the field.
Against the odds, Borthwick has wrought an extraordinary transformation at Leicester in the space of 16 months, and the sense of confidence and fulfilment it has brought the former England, Saracens, and Bath lock is almost tangible.
It was reflected in his assessment of 6ft 8ins lock Ollie Chessum, 21, right, one of the rookie Leicester forwards who stood up to be counted in the 16-13 victory in Bordeaux.
“Ollie is a great lad, and he’s got a younger brother (Lewis) coming through the system who has also got a lot of potential. Ollie’s shown a huge amount of perseverance, and if you talk about grasping opportunities, every time he’s given a chance he jumps at it. He has worked really hard at his game and it hasn’t been a straight path for him. He has gone a different path, playing for Nottingham last year. He shone there, and then he’s come here and worked hard to improve physically. His desire and focus has been impressive, and you’ve seen that on the pitch.”
Borthwick was renowned as a lineout specialist for his attention to detail, but he emphasises a much broader vision in a coaching outlook at Tigers which is tailor-made rather than one-size-fits-all.
“There is not one label you can fit everybody with. It’s on a case-by-case basis: where are their strengths, where are there areas to improve, and how you need to coach them to get more out of them – and that can change on a daily basis.”
The only area where Borthwick insists on uniformity is a willingness to commit to sheer, uncompromising hard work.
He asks: “When you were watching on Saturday, did you think our players played like it was important? That’s what I really care about. Do our players go out every week and play like this matters, and do they play tough, play hard. Do we have a team that our supporters can cheer on, because they think that team cares.”
Borthwick sees the connection between the players and the local community as integral to the wellbeing of the club, and he waxes lyrical about why Leicester’s fans are such an invaluable asset.
“We love having our support at the ground, especially after playing all those times without them. We may not have all the resources of other teams, but what we have got – which other teams don’t have – is an incredible support base. We got 25,000 the weekend before last and they help this team enormously.”
“What we have which other teams don’t have is an incredible support base”
The tribute continues: “I’m really grateful to them for everything that they give. They are the lifeblood of this club, and I think they are a real competitive advantage to us. And I thank them for it, and want to keep them cheering this team on.”
What Borthwick refuses to hide behind are the large salary cap differences within Europe, and different sized budgets within the Premiership, that have not only contributed to the departure of star players like Genge and Ford, but also make it harder to compete.
He says: “I actually don’t give it a second’s thought because there is nothing I can do about it. I tend to put my energy and thought into something I can do something about. My focus is to coach this team as well as I can, from people who have 112 caps like Ben Youngs, or 95 like Dan Cole, to the players who have just come out of the Academy, and to all those in between.”
“The stance I take is how, at least with the resources we’ve got, can we maximise every little bit of it. So, how do we squeeze everything out of what we’ve got in every decision we make? That factors into decisions about our Academy, and how we bring players through, and it comes back to decisions about recruitment and retention, because there is no doubt that players are offered more money to play elsewhere. So it’s about how we can run the best program possible.
“We need to be as smart as we can with the resources we have. Other clubs in England have better resources than us, never mind Europe.”
Which brings us to today’s second round home European Cup clash against Connacht, an Irish side who themselves have a reputation for astute management of modest resources – as demonstrated by their runaway 36-9 home win over Stade Francais last weekend.
Borthwick’s assessment of the visitors? “I’ve known Andy Friend for a few years now, and he’s a really experienced coach who has seen a lot. I’ve seen what he’s built there, and they handled Stade Francais pretty well.”
“He’s got a tough hardworking pack, and what you see with the Irish packs is a back five which is really athletic, moves well, carries well, and jackals well. Then you’ve got a 10 in Jack Carty who manages the team around the pitch beautifully, and with Bundee Aki back in the centre you’ve got real power. And then Mack Hansen has played really well for them in the back three. You’ve got a team that really fights, and also plays smart rugby. So, it’s going to be a formidable challenge.”
When Borthwick is asked about the psychology of a winning run, and if there is a comparison with the England record run he was part of in 2016-17, he says he views it in two parts.
“Number one, I look at the endings of games. The last two I don’t think we’ve handled particularly well – if you look at Bordeaux we handled the last 20 in general much better than we did at Harlequins the week before, but we still gave the opposition an opportunity.
So, managing and closing out the game is something we’re looking at, because it’s not a position Leicester Tigers have been in an awful lot recently.”
He then reveals that a big difference this season has been Leicester’s ability to stay in the fight, and explains the influence of strength and conditioning coach Aled Walters. “What’s happened is that Aled has got the team fit. I’d say he’s an incredible coach, and he’s got the team conditioned well – and although it’s not quite where we want it to be, we’re getting there.”
“Never talk past the next game and never to look back very far”
He adds: “The second area is one thing that I’ve taken from the England experience, which is never talk past the next game – and never to look back very far. The only thing we talk about now is the Connacht game, and we don’t look at anything beyond it, and we do a review of our previous game early in the week and then park it there.”
Borthwick then hands us an insight into how the Leicester job has changed him – although the magnitude of the risk he took when he signed up, with failure likely to torpedo his career, goes unmentioned.
“People often talk about it being three to four years to turn the ship around. It can be a bit quicker if you make really good decisions and coach well, and it can take a bit longer if you don’t maximise every bit of your resource.
“When I came in and started really understanding where the team was at, and where the club was at – with everybody dealing with Covid –I thought, right, there’s a lot of work here. There’s also a new CEO, a new finance director, and a new coaching team, and we all knuckled down to get on with the work, but that’s the timescale people were talking about.”
However, Borthwick says he brooked no doubts about his capacity to rise to the challenge: “I was absolutely determined to do it. It is not very often that you get the opportunity at a club the size of this to turn it round, and try and do something special. We have a lot of work to do to get where we want to get, but there is a lot of growth in this team.”
What Borthwick cannot control is the surge of expectation from Tigers fans when it comes to winning a league title for the first time since 2013 , but he says he has a plan.
“I promise you, hand on heart, that I’ve never once spoken to this team about the table. Never once. And I can’t imagine at any point in the near future having that conversation. I think the only way that we can build the future we want is by doing today what we need to do. That is the mentality that I have, the one we have, and it’s a pretty simple one.
“It’s to try and be the best team that we can be, to try and train better tomorrow than we did today, to put in a performance this week that takes us forward.”
Leicester’s direction of travel so far this season under Steve Borthwick is on a sharp upward trajectory, and the compass bearings on which it is based have been calculated with true precision.
