Premiership champions Leicester Tigers roaring back to their best, reckons Kayser

By Josh Graham

Newly crowned Premiership champions Leicester Tigers are back to their best and hungry for Heineken Champions Cup success, according to their former hooker Benjamin Kayser.

Steve Borthwick’s side claimed their first domestic league title in nine years with a 15-12 win over Saracens earlier this month thanks to Freddie Burns’ last-gasp drop goal at Twickenham.

And ex-France international Kayser believes that taste of silverware will only leave the Tigers yearning for more ahead of their 2022/23 Heineken Champions Cup campaign which will see them face Clermont Auvergne and Ospreys in Pool B.

“I think they will be hungry and will want to challenge themselves against the best and in French we say, ‘your appetite comes while you eat’. They have eaten and they will want to come for seconds,” explained Kayser, who made 50 appearances for the club between 2007 and 2009.

“They are back and they need to prove it with [European] silverware. Let’s not forget that two years ago, if it wasn’t for Saracens getting caught with their hand stuck in the cookie jar, they probably would have gone down.

“It’s a tremendous turnaround from Steve Borthwick and his entire team. They are still building and they are still young.

“They are going to lose some key guys in Ellis Genge and George Ford, so let’s see how they handle that but I think the appetite is back, Welford Road is roaring again and there is huge Premiership experience but there is also an incredible emphasis on Heineken Champions Cup rugby.

“When I was there, they were always saying, ‘be the best club in the world’ and that definitely included European rugby.”

Kayser helped carry out the EPCR Challenge Cup and Heineken Champions Cup draws at the Aviva Stadium, where the finals of the most exciting competitions to date after the addition of South African sides will take place.

The former Clermont No.2 drew two of his old sides together in a rematch of last year’s Round of 16 knockout clash which saw the Tigers comfortably prevail 56-27 on aggregate after recording their first win in 17 years at the Stade Marcel-Michelin before backing it up at Mattioli Woods Welford Road.

And former Tigers fly-half Andy Goode believes last year’s success will leave the players in no doubt that they can repeat the trick against the three-time Heineken Champions Cup finalists who finished seventh in last season’s Top 14.

“They played Clermont twice last year and won both games. In Steve Borthwick’s mind, he’ll just worry about the first game and then the next game and that’s how he works,” said Goode, who won the Heineken Champions Cup twice during a glittering Leicester career that spanned more than a decade across two spells.

“But if you are a Leicester player, you are thinking, ‘well we know how to win over at the Marcel-Michelin’, which historically has been a very tough place for teams to go.

“At home Mattioli Woods Welford Road is a great stadium and the fans are back in and in full voice after winning the Premiership this year, so they will know what it takes to beat Clermont.”

Ospreys qualified as the highest-placed Welsh side in the United Rugby Championship, finishing ninth, but despite boasting the likes of British & Irish Lions and Wales legends Alun Wyn Jones and George North on their books, Goode believes Leicester will have too much for Toby Booth’s side.

He said: “Ospreys are a bit of an unknown in Europe. They have got some high-quality Welsh internationals but they have underperformed over the last few years.

“It’s always a sticky game in Swansea but Leicester will be expecting to progress from that Pool.”

Tigers had their European dreams crushed by Leinster last season with a 23-14 defeat on their own patch in the quarter-final but after upsetting the odds against a well-fancied Saracens side in the Premiership final, Goode believes they can reach at least the semi-finals this time around.

The 42-year-old explained: “Leicester have had a tough few years. They were very disappointed in themselves in the Leinster Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final when they went 20-0 down.

“But to go into the final and beat Saracens, a team a lot of people backed as big favourites, will stand them in great stead for next year and hopefully give them a massive lift to go further than they did last year.

“They met Leinster on a day when they were red hot and unfortunately that was the end of the competition for them but to win the Premiership this year and a big stage final in the manner they did, will certainly give them a springboard for next year.”

European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) is the tournament organiser for the Heineken Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup, featuring the very best club rugby teams from England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Wales and – for the first time from the 2022/23 season – South Africa.