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The thing that most pleased Borthwick about Leicester in France

By PA
(Photo by Romain Perrocheau/AFP via Getty Images)

Leicester head coach Steve Borthwick praised the courage of his players as they overcame periods of intense pressure to claim a 16-13 Heineken Champions Cup victory over Bordeaux at the Stade Chaban-Delmas. The Tigers have now won 13 competitive games in succession and this was a significant opening win to their cup campaign but they had to dig deep to overcome the Top 14 leaders, with a late George Ford penalty sealing the win.

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“I’m proud of these players,” said Borthwick. “When Bordeaux kicked the ball into the corner at the end, I thought, ‘Regardless of what the outcome is, I’m proud of the players’. They came here to Bordeaux and had a real go.

“They had the courage to play a little bit different and the courage to have a go. Bordeaux are a brilliant team, with threats all around the park. We wanted to challenge them in a different way so that they would have to think a little bit differently.

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“There is a lot of potential to be a good team. They have got an attitude in wanting to get better and, from my point of view, it’s a pleasure to coach them.”

George Ford kicked eleven points for Leicester with Guy Porter scoring their only try, while Jean-Baptiste Dubie touched down for Bordeaux as Maxime Lucu added eight points. Bordeaux second row Kaine Douglas was sent to the sin bin for a swinging arm early on and the Tigers took advantage with Porter touching down after a Bryce Hegarty break.

After laying siege to the Bordeaux try line, Ford opted for a cross-kick, but Hosea Saumaki ended up taking Nans Ducuing out in the air. Referee Andrew Brace was left with no option but to show Saumaki a yellow card. After a period of sustained pressure, Bordeaux centre Moram Falatea-Moefana carried forward, before executing a perfect offload to put Dubie over for the try. Lucu added the extras meaning the scores were level at 10-10 at half-time.

With four minutes left on the clock, Ford knocked over a penalty from 45 metres out to put the Tigers back in front. Bordeaux turned down a kickable penalty to level the scores at the last play of the game, but they refused to accept the draw and went for the corner. But after a few powerful carries, they were penalised with Leicester coming out on top.

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Despite the impressive run of Leicester form, Borthwick insisted he would not be getting carried away. “From my perspective, I don’t think too much about what’s happened in the past,” he said. “All I’m really concentrating on is what can we do to get better after this game – and we’ll continue with that.

“If you start thinking too much about what happened in the past you can get stuck there and maybe that’s what Leicester Tigers did as a club. We’ll take lessons from this, enjoy this, and then we’ve got a Sunday game coming up against Connacht at Welford Road.”

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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