Kay: Tigers can roar again with Toomua and Tuilagi

World Cup winner turned BT Sport pundit Ben Kay talks to NEALE HARVEY about how he anticipates the new season unfolding at both club and international level, picking out the key men who will set the agenda.
How do you see the next Premiership season panning out?
When you’re involved in the Premiership as closely as I am and watch it develop year-on-year, you realise how much harder it becomes. Teams are now performing consistently every week and to be a Saracens at the top you’ve got to continually keep improving. Wasps and Exeter have been doing that, my old club Leicester will be looking to make a much bigger impact, and, although I expect Saracens will still take some stopping, the competition looks pretty open.
As part of that Leicester side that won four successive Premiership titles between 1999 and 2002, how good are Saracens compared to you lot?
They’ve surpassed us. When Brendan Venter got involved with Saracens in 2009 Leicester were still top dogs, but rather than look at Leicester and think: “How do we catch them?” Brendan and the other guys at that club asked: “How can we go a long way past Leicester?” From where I’m standing they’ve done that and the challenge for Leicester and all the other teams now is to do something that’s going to rock the boat and go past Saracens. Saracens look very well set, though, and I like how they’ve gone away from being a side that had four or five global superstars and created their own team based on a core of guys who’ve come through their academy. They’re a team now, rather than a group of individuals, and it’s paying huge dividends. That’s a difficult thing to replicate quickly and while there are teams to challenge Saracens, they’re still favourites in my eyes to land a third successive Premiership title.
What do you make of your old club, who still make the play-offs every year but have now gone three seasons without any silverware?
Aaron Mauger coming in as head coach has seen a big change away from traditional Leicester tactics, but they had to do that. World Rugby will adapt the laws and make sure the game moves towards a more expansive style and Aaron’s well placed to adapt to that. Richard Cockerill’s doing a good job of maintaining the old Leicester ethos but if you could put together a dream Premiership backline,  the guys Leicester have got coming in mean they will be a significant force if they can click and play the style of rugby those guys are used to playing.
You’re impressed by Leicester’s signings then?
Yes, and by Matt Toomua in particular. Even before his excellent last game against England we knew what he was all about and having played alongside guys like Rod Kafer, Pat Howard, Darryl Gibson and Aaron Mauger during my playing days at Welford Road, Leicester have always been at their best when they’ve had a No.12 playmaker. Toomua is a hugely significant signing for Leicester and if he and Manu Tuilagi can both stay fit, that relationship in the centres will be formidable. With guys like Ben Youngs, Freddie Burns and JP Pietersen around as well, you can see how potent that back division could be.
It’s almost unheard of for Leicester to go three years without a trophy, why have they underperformed in so many big end-of-season games?
One of the negative sides of the Premiership is that reaching the play-offs can sometimes become an end in itself. Tigers have qualified for the play-offs every year and maybe their focus has been too much on making it into that top four without really believing they could go further. They’ve had a couple of really disappointing semi-final losses to Bath and Saracens over the last two seasons. Leicester will always demand success, it’s in their DNA, and certainly the board will be putting pressure on Richard Cockerill to bring in silverware. He’ll know that, but I’m pretty convinced that under Aaron Mauger they can get there. Whether it will be this season I don’t know because Saracens will be a hard nut to crack, but they should be more consistent. At times last year their form was very up and down, so that is key for them and a lot depends on how quickly those new names coming in can settle.
How intense is the pressure living in the Leicester goldfish bowl?
I’ve never played at other clubs, but certainly everyone in Leicestershire knows about the Tigers and you feel that weight of expectation every season and every time you step out. When you have a poor game and then venture into a supermarket, you can see people’s shoulders slumped and they give you that look! There is big pressure but that’s probably why Leicester are in the play-offs every year, even in seasons that’ve been regarded poor by their standards.
What weight of expectation will rugby director Richard Cockerill be feeling?
Every single Leicester coach, every single day of their life will feel under pressure, but that’s what drives them on. Good performers perform under pressure and over the last few seasons Cockers has handled it pretty well. You’ve got to give him the credit he deserves because aside from winning three Premiership titles up to 2013 and reaching the semi-finals of the Champions Cup last season, he’s recognised things needed to change by bringing Aaron Mauger in and allowing him to run things his way.
How well has Aaron done?
Let’s not beat about the bush, not everything Aaron did last season worked and it will have hurt that they failed in two semi-finals. Aaron’s still learning in the Premiership and knows he has to get better and improve the Leicester players that have come in, but as a combination, to have Richard focused on the traditional values of the English game coupled with someone who’s focused on the aspects of the English game that need improving to catch up with the Southern Hemisphere, then you’ve got the ideal pairing. The one thing I want to see from Leicester next season, and the Premiership as a whole, is those skill levels getting better, particularly under pressure, which Aaron will be exceptional at leading now he’s had a year under his belt.

On to England, as a World Cup-winning second-row how impressed were you with Maro Itoje and George Kruis on the tour of Australia?
Hugely impressed. I’ll tell you how good they are: 18 months ago we were all saying England had the best second-row partnership in world rugby with Courtney Lawes and Joe Launchbury, but Itoje and Kruis have managed to dislodge both of them. That speaks volumes, but they’ll have to keep on being good now otherwise they in turn will be overtaken. But what’s also been very impressive about them is they mirror what Saracens do so well by just getting things right. It’s not necessarily the flash stuff that we all concentrate on but what they do as part of every minute role they have in the team. They make good decisions, they’re not easily fazed and they’re a hell of a partnership.
From Paul Ackford and Wade Dooley to yourself and Martin Johnson, England have traditionally prospered with a settled lock pairing. Do you envisage Itoje and Kruis achieving those levels?
Absolutely. The lineout’s important and one thing that’s very useful for England with these two is they play together for one club. Playing with Johnno at Leicester meant we had an understanding; we knew each other’s limits in the lineout and around the park, and having Kruis and Itoje playing week-in, week-out for their club will only help them build that relationship. Having Mako and Billy Vunipola in there has helped as well and with them both being young men, you could see them becoming 100-cappers, fitness and form permitting.
They’ve played a lot of games, will they need looking after?
They will, but physically they both look pretty good. From all accounts both are diligent in their training, which is half the battle, and if you wanted to be at a club that looks after its players, Saracens seems to be the one with their rotation policy. I wouldn’t see durability as a major problem for either of them.
Launchbury and Lawes will hope to come again, but who else do you see emerging as genuine second-row England prospects?
There are a lot of good locks around – Matt Symons at Wasps, Charlie Ewels and Dave Attwood at Bath for example – but one guy I was hugely impressed with last season before he got injured was Mike Williams at Tigers. I think Eddie Jones was impressed as well and if Mike can stay fully fit this year and start the season well, he could be knocking on that England door. We’ve almost got an embarrassment of second-row riches now and probably the hardest thing for an England coach will be trying to maintain consistency of selection. Other teams don’t have such a big player pool which means that if someone has a quiet game they can be nursed through it and be brilliant next time, but if someone has a quiet game for England we’re all immediately screaming for the guy who’s playing brilliantly in the Premiership to be promoted to the Test team. That’s the challenge but Eddie’s already proved that he doesn’t listen to the media.
Were you surprised Dom Barrow was overlooked for the Saxons tour?
Very surprised. One thing that’s impressed me about Dom has been his leadership capabilities. Leicester have traditionally had a lot of big leaders and maybe that’s one area where they’ve never really replaced the likes of Martin Corry, Martin Johnson and Darren Garforth, but Dom came in from Newcastle and showed exactly that kind of leadership in the second-row. Like Mike Williams, he’s another who could definitely push his case with a big season.
Matt Symons has signed for Wasps, how do you rate his chances now that he’s left struggling London Irish for a top four side?
He was a standout player for Irish, won their player-of-the-season award and is a good captain and leader. It’ll be exceptionally tough for him to break in given the names we’ve already mentioned, but as far as Eddie Jones is concerned there’s a clean slate for everyone now and if people like Symons perform and others don’t, they’ll move quickly up the pecking order. There are opportunities but Symons is going to have to do something very special to dislodge the four guys who went to Australia because I can’t see them resting on their laurels.
What do you make of Eddie Jones’ first seven months in charge, nine wins out of nine and a Grand Slam first up looks pretty good?
Is he a coaching genius? No. Were England really so ridiculously poor in the World Cup? No. But where he has been a genius is in controlling any agenda that he’s wanted to talk about and he’s fostered belief in a team that wasn’t actually that bad. We maybe got carried away after a bad 20 minutes against Wales. What you need is total belief and certainly that 2003 team I played in had that.
When times were hard we believed we would come out on top and I equate what Eddie Jones has done to that same belief Clive Woodward and Johnno instilled. Whereas if Stuart Lancaster was a chief executive he’d have come from an operations background, Eddie Jones is the brands man and he’s getting his players believing they are good enough. He gets the opposition believing England are great and the media believe it, too. For example, he mentioned during the Six Nations that by the end of the tournament England would be 30 per cent fitter. They weren’t, but if the players start believing they’re fitter and if the media start saying they look fitter, then it adds to the confidence. It becomes contagious and Eddie’s been exceptional in setting the agendas he’s wanted. That’s a lesson for any potential England coach of the future to learn from.
Do you have any sympathy for Stuart Lancaster, who must secretly be tearing his hair out at seeing basically the same set of players winning?
Yes I do, but that’s the role, isn’t it? I felt sorry for Martin Johnson before him, because I know what a guy he was and how integral he was not only on the playing side in 2003, but also the coaching and decision-making side. For him not to be involved in top level rugby since 2011 is ridiculous really. It’s a tough gig with England and Stuart suffered because of it, but some people take over at the right time and also make the best of those opportunities when they come around. You hear about lucky coaches… well Eddie Jones isn’t lucky, he’s just been incredibly smart.
Is there any danger Eddie’s bubble will burst?
When things aren’t going well he’s not the sort of character the British media will do any favours for because he can be quite abrupt. But he’s got a magnificent player pool so if he plays his cards right, this should be the start of a hugely successful period for English rugby.