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Leicester make bold England claim about Ollie Chessum, George Martin
By Liam Heagney
Dan McKellar has boldly predicted that Ollie Chessum and George Martin can transfer their fledgling Leicester second row partnership onto the international stage with England for the next decade or so.
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Saturday’s win over Saracens was only the second time that the youthful pair had started together as a lock partnership in the Tigers engine room – and they showed what they can achieve when working in tandem by getting the better of England colleague Maro Itoje and his fellow forwards at Mattioli Welford Road just four weeks out from the start of the 2024 Guinness Six Nations away to Italy in Rome.
Chessum and Martin were part of Steve Borthwick’s England squad at the recent Rugby World Cup, with Itoje and Chessum his preferred starting second rows until it came to the semi-final versus South Africa when he started Martin in place of the benched Martin.
The more surprising situation, though, is that until last weekend’s win over Bath, Chessum and Martin had never started together in the Leicester second row even though both broke into the Tigers first team in the 2019/20 season and have since played more than 100 club games between them.
Ability to play in the back row, England call-ups and injuries prevented them from getting selected together as the Leicester No4 and No5 – until these last two weekends. Chessum was named official man of the match against Saracens, a 19-10 win in which Martin also excelled, and coach McKellar was effusive in his post-game praise for their efforts.
“They were against some quality, against Maro who they respect incredibly highly, so they were up for it. Two good mates who, if they get it right, should play a lot of Test matches together over the next 10 years for England. There were good signs from both of them,” enthused the Australian.
England’s Six Nations squad will be named by Borthwick on January 17 and some Welford Road injury updates were that Leicester’s Freddie Steward was okay despite hurting his shoulder on Saturday while Mark McCall said of Jamie George, the Saracens hooker who was on water boy duty: “He had a sore neck. Don’t worry. It’s not a serious thing.”
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Meanwhile, referencing the display of ex-England full-back Mike Brown on the wing the day after the 38-year-old agreed on a deal to play for the 2024/25 season, McKellar exclaimed: “Just an outstanding pro and there is a reason why he is still playing.
“He is a great example for all of the young players and not only that, his performances have been first class and he was outstanding again. It’s great to have him around for this season and then next year as well… I think everyone comes away from it [the contract extension] pretty happy.”
Switching to his team’s win in their final league game before travelling to champions La Rochelle and then hosting beaten finalists Leinster in the Champions Cup, McKellar said of the win over Saracens: “As a team set-piece, physicality, I thought our defence in the second half was outstanding. Scrum and maul allowed us to assert dominance and off the back of that, we won the penalty count and field position. We felt pretty comfortable and came away with a good four points.
“It’s pleasing. When teams come here they know it’s a physical battle. We knew Saracens would come back at us, they are a good, quality side and have world-class players across the park., It was a good contest.
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“Handling errors hurt us, we were probably guilty of playing too wide at times in the 22, which allowed them to get off the line, put us under pressure and forced errors. That’s an area that we will tidy up.
“Happy, but we’re not satisfied. We get into Europe now which is a massive challenge against probably the two best teams in Europe over the last five or six years before we come back and play Harlequins in London on a Friday night… we didn’t want to peak too early and we certainly didn’t do that, so it is all ahead of us.”
