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'It was sink or swim': The fearsome dressing room culture which existed at Dean Richards' Leicester

(Photo by Mike Finn-Kelcey/Getty Images)

Ex-England international Sam Vesty has opened up about the very different dressing room culture that existed when he was a player at Leicester and what is now tolerated in the modern game regarding drinking, training ground bust-ups and general behaviours. 

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The current Northampton Saints assistant coach made his name at Tigers during an era where the club were serial trophy winners who played hard and partied even harder. Vesty made 111 appearances for Leicester between 2002 and 2010 before finishing out his playing career at Bath.

Now 38, he has since honed a reputation as one of English rugby’s most up-and-coming coaches, earning his stripes at Worcester before wielding his influence at Chris Boyd’s Northampton. He also assisted England, travelling with them for their 2017 tour of Argentina while other staff were away with the Lions. 

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Northampton assistant coach Sam Vesty guests on The Lockdown, the RugbyPass pandemic interview series

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Northampton assistant coach Sam Vesty guests on The Lockdown, the RugbyPass pandemic interview series

Looking back on his time on the field, he claimed the atmosphere at Leicester was sink or swim with players who couldn’t sufficiently adapt to the way it was run quickly cast aside during an era where Tigers were constantly challenging for Premiership and European titles.

Speaking to former Leicester teammate Jim Hamilton on The Lockdown, the RugbyPass pandemic interview series, Vesty said of his eight years at Tigers: “My fondest moments, a lot of them are off the pitch stuff where we just had a lot of fun. 

“We did some great things on the field and I loved all that, but we had some great times off the field. We worked hard when we crossed the white line, that was very definite, but there was some good fun off it as well and growing up through the age groups, they were real fond times.

“You make some really good friends at that time, don’t you? I look back on this with really fond memories. Some of the drinking sessions were great fun, some of the games we had when we managed to get ourselves out of the crap and win, and some of the training sessions – you look back on some of those training sessions where it used to kick-off and you actually look back on those fondly now. They were flippin’ good times.

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“What I took from my time then is that it spit out lots of people who couldn’t take that environment. It created an environment that if you weren’t that type of person, there was nowhere to go. You either swam or you sank and if you sank you were just got rid of, you were there for three months and then suddenly gone and that happened to a lot of people in those days. Actually, a lot of the people who that happened to would have been good players.

“What I have learned from being away from there is that was one way of doing it. It was a very good way but it was very much of its time and it was very much of the place it was. Moving on, some players wouldn’t make it there but would make it somewhere else and be very, very good players, so there are different ways of doing things.

“But the fundamentals of you have to be competitive, you have to create a competitive environment where people want to beat the other people in that squad, that actually just makes everyone get better and better and better.

“Ultimately I take that competitiveness out of my time at Leicester, and then secondly the culture was peer-driven. You have been part of teams that go and write stuff on walls, they go and make lists of things and they do all these things that at that point we didn’t do.

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“But you knew as soon as someone was out of order it was put down and everyone knew where the boundaries were, they just weren’t written on walls. It wasn’t like that. Dean (Richards) set a culture, the players (he mentions Martin Johnson, Martin Corry, Richard Cockerill and Graham Rowntree by nickname), there were so many leaders there that just bossed it.”

 

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BH 1 hour ago
TJ Perenara clarifies reference to the Treaty in All Blacks' Haka

Nope you're both wrong. Absolutely 100% wrong. You two obviously know nothing about NZ history, or the Treaty which already gives non-Māori "equal" rights. You are ignorant to what the Crown have already done to Māori. I've read it multiple times, attended the magnificent hikoi and witnessed a beautiful moment of Māori and non-Māori coming together in a show of unity against xenophobia and a tiny minority party trying to change a constitutional binding agreement between the Crown and Māori. The Crown have hundreds of years of experience of whitewashing our culture, trying to remove the language and and take away land and water rights that were ours but got stolen from. Māori already do not have equal rights in all of the stats - health, education, crime, etc. The Treaty is a binding constitutional document that upholds Māori rights and little Seymour doesn't like that. Apparently he's not even a Māori anyway as his tribes can't find his family tree connection LOL!!!


Seymour thinks he can change it because he's a tiny little worm with small man syndrome who represents the ugly side of NZ. The ugly side that wants all Māori to behave, don't be "radical" or "woke", and just put on a little dance for a show. But oh no they can't stand up for themselves against oppression with a bill that is a waste of time and money that wants to cause further division in their own indigenous country.


Wake up to yourselves. You can't pick and choose what parts of Māori culture you want and don't want when it suits you. If sport and politics don't mix then why did John Key do the 3 way handshake at the RWC 2011 final ceremony? Why is baldhead Luxon at ABs games promoting himself? The 1980s apartheid tour was a key example of sports and politics mixing together. This is the same kaupapa. You two sound like you support apartheid.

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