Richard Cockerill determined to ‘do it my way’ at struggling Leicester

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/sep/30/richard-cockerill-leicester-injuries-form

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Crisis, what crisis? Talk to Richard Cockerill, Leicester’s director of rugby, about the Tigers’ grim injury list and below-par recent results and the crackle of defiance is remarkable even by his own passionate standards.

“I am here for the battle, I ain’t going anywhere. If I am going to get the sack, I am doing it my way,” he says. “When we get through to the other side – and we will – we will be better for it. If we are sitting here in May having a chat, then I am right. If not, I’ll have a really tidy garden.”

There is more, much more. Just four games into the season is early to be spraying the S-word around, even at a club with Leicester’s high standards, but when you have just lost 45-0 at Bath and been beaten at home by London Irish without 21 of your regular squad there is decreasing margin for error. Hence Cockerill’s defiant message to friends and enemies alike.

“Do we still expect to be in the play-offs? Yes, 100%. Everyone has to show some conviction and get on with it,” he says. “The players are here for the battle. If they are not, they can go and sit somewhere else and I will pick the lads who want to stand up and fight. Some may fall along the wayside but it won’t be me and it won’t be the players that want to do it.”

The only way is up, in short, without the influential figures of Tom Croft, Dan Cole, Manu Tuilagi, the club captain Ed Slater, Geoff Parling and Tom Youngs. Cockerill’s blunt message to those still standing for Saturday’s trip to Gloucester is that the Tigers’ season will not necessarily be defined by one poor fortnight. “I’d defy anybody to take the best nine tight-five players out of their team and still be as effective.

“Any right person would look at the facts and understand why it’s not as we’d want it to be. Some will say: ‘You’re shit, get rid of you, you little fucker,’ but that’s the world you live in. I can’t control that.”

The good news is that a handful of reinforcements will be back for Kingsholm. Brad Thorn, Michele Rizzo and Seremaia Bai should all be fit and Logovi’i Mulipola is close. Tuilagi is only a further week or so away from returning from a groin problem.

The flip side is that the November Tests – when the club will again wave goodbye to its international players – are just around the corner. Recent reserve games have either been lost by a wide margin or cancelled, some good players have left the club and rival academies are producing more gems.

This is the third season out of the last four in which a glut of injuries have undermined Cockerill’s plans. Is the famously harsh Leicester training environment exacting too heavy a toll? Does the squad contain an imbalance of many international players, leaving the club too exposed during and after the gruelling Rugby Championship and the November Test window?

All are valid questions which Cockerill admits are also being asked at board level. “At some point it goes beyond bad luck and coincidence and we’re looking into all of that,” he confirmed, pointing out 80% of the absentees had either been injured away from the club or had wear-and-tear injuries commonplace in professional sport. “If you train less, you could probably control it but then you’re not as well prepared. It’s about getting the balance. I know I’m the devil but I do not control things when blokes are 4,000 miles away.”

Cockerill accepts he can be less phlegmatic after a bad defeat – “Don’t worry, I don’t tell them it’s my fault when we get into the meeting room” – but he has been at Leicester long enough to understand that blaming individuals à la Phil Mickelson is not going to help.

That does not mean Leicester’s young players can relax; it is four years since the Tigers lost three league games in a row. “When it is not going well that’s when you see what people are made of,” cautions Cockerill. “If you are in, great. If you are going to sit and snipe and not be in, go somewhere else.

“That is how I deal with it. I am doing it my way. I am not going to take somebody else’s advice and then get the sack. That’s bollocks. If you ask for too many opinions, you get too many ideas. Sometimes you have to back your instinct. There is no point worrying about the sack. You can spend so much time protecting your job you never do anything.

“I could come in and go: ‘We have 20 blokes missing, we are going to lose.’ Forget that. Those young players have to meet the challenge. If you start sticking all our missing bodies back in the tight five it is a different kettle of fish.” Neither Leicester nor their tigerish boss will be rolling over meekly.