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The rival Premiership player that has most impressed Mark McCall
By Liam Heagney
Title-chasing Saracens boss Mark McCall has named a Leicester Tigers forward as the rival club player that has impressed him most across the 2021/22 Gallagher Premiership season. The campaign is down to its semi-final stage where this Saturday McCall’s 2021 Championship title winners play host to Harlequins, the defending Premiership champions, while Leicester entertain Northampton.
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Ahead of those games, all four club bosses – McCall, Tabai Matson, Steve Borthwick and Chris Boyd – attended the PRL awards night on Tuesday where they held a fascinating round table Q&A that was published in the UK Telegraph on Friday.
Among the wide-ranging questions posed, the directors of rugby were asked who would they pick as the player of the season outside of their own club? Saracens boss McCall had no hesitation in naming Julian Montoya, the Argentine hooker at Leicester, as his choice.
It was last season when the 28-year-old first checked in at the Tigers but injury and Test rugby demands meant he only played six games in that 2020/21 campaign. Now, though, he has been in the vanguard of the surge to the top of the table by Leicester, scoring seven tries in his 16 league appearances while also figuring prominently in the club’s run to the Heineken Champions Cup quarter-finals.
“The person I admire because he also plays international rugby but he seems to give his club side everything he has got week in, week out with unbelievable quality is Montoya from Leicester,” said McCall, the long-serving Saracens DoR.
The soon-to-depart Northampton boss Boyd chose Harlequins’ Danny Care, Quins boss Matson plumped for Leicester’s Richard Wigglesworth while Tigers coach Borthwick chose Wasps veteran Jimmy Gopperth who, coincidently, is joining Leicester for the 2022/23 season.
On Wigglesworth, Matson said: “Maybe I’m being sentimental, but I think that longevity is the true test of high performance. If you have a couple of seasons followed by one bad one you get spat out at this level, so I will go Richard Wigglesworth. This is the toughest league in the world and his numbers are testament to someone who delivers week in, week out.”
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