Leicester Tigers boss Richard Cockerill has claimed that he had ‘no complaints’ relating to any of the three penalty tries given against his team in Saturday’s loss to the Saracens.
This was the first hat-trick of penalty tries given in the history of the Premiership, and the Leicester tigers were on the wrong end of them at Allianz Park.
Cockerill admitted that his side failed to ‘front up’ to the challenge of the Saracens today, and also backed up his decision to select Tom Youngs and Dan Cole on the bench, due to Cockerill rotating his Leicester squad.
Cockerill said to the media:
“I think there’s no getting away from that the first half was a pretty good contest. Second half, make no bones about it, Saracens were very good and our set-piece was substandard. They were very good and we were very poor, credit to them. We’re very disappointed in what we put out there,”
“We got done today royally. There’s no way of talking around that, sometimes that’s just the game and fair play to Saracens. There’s a long way to go.””It won’t be a comfortable week for the squad or the coaches because that wasn’t good enough.”
Side selections were also explained:
“We chose to pick the side we picked and I’m not going to make any excuses. If you can’t cope physically in the lineout or scrum then you won’t survive in this league or do well in it. It’s not something we like to see from this forward pack and we’ll be getting ready for next week against Saints.”
“We always planned to rotate and trust the squad, which we did. Those people take their opportunities or they don’t and that’s how you find out about players. Next week at home [to Northampton] is a very important game. The thought process was to look after our squad and it’s a tough place to come at the best of times.”
Leicester lost two players; flankers Ed Slater and Tom Croft due to early injuries, and Slater is now a doubt when Leicester face Northampton next week, while Manu Tuilagi could be fit for this meeting, as Cockerill said he would like him to return sooner rather than later.
Richard Cockerill gave some details on these injuries post-game.
“Croft has got stitches and took a bang to the head from a stray boot. He’s a bit dazed but hopefully ok. Slater has tweaked his knee, he certainly probably won’t be fit for next week.””[Manu] is alright. We would have liked him today… playing tighthead! He’s doing well, he’s improving all the time and getting into full training. Hopefully sooner rather than later he’ll be out on the field.”
