Leicester Tigers have won six of their last seven games to advance to the Premier League semi-finals. Photo: Getty Images/David Rogers
Eight percent. In January, after a narrow defeat in the East Midlands derby — the fourth Premier League game since Richard Wigglesworth's tenure as interim head coach of Leicester — Tigers' Oval Insights, the analytics gurus, put the odds of reaching the play-offs at the end of this season at just eight percent, which guided Leicester's rags-to-riches win last season.
Leicester were practically written off — even by some of their own — and for good reason. A month earlier, the Tigers had lost both of their head coaches — Steve Borthwick and Kevin Sinfield — to England, with Wigglesworth still playing. Suddenly, the Premier League's most prolific player of all time was in the thick of things, and many thought that a mid-season departure of two managers — a rarity in rugby — would be too much for the inexperienced, albeit gifted, player to face. , newbie.
However, Leicester will travel to AJ Bell Stadium this Sunday to face Sale in the Premier League semi-finals, defying those odds by winning six of their last seven Premier League matches. The Tigers' hopes of retaining the Premier League title they won so admirably last season still flicker, but it all started with that eight percent.
“We were eighth after playing at Northampton,” says Wigglesworth. “There were two really important games coming up, from their point of view, away to the Gloucester and the London Irish. We determined exactly that if we crossed the line in them, there would be a jump.
«Sticking this on the board would probably be a little old fashioned, but we had to solve this problem because it was in social media and you'd be pretending the guys didn't see it if we didn't see it. We addressed that [by asking] “how good would it be?” and then we got to work. We solved this problem by trying to fix some of rugby and getting to work — this is what this group does best.
“However, I could write to James Tozer [co-founder of Oval Insights] with a few select words. I'll remind him of this.»
Richard Wigglesworth is chasing his eighth national championship. Photo: Getty Images/Andrew Kearns
Turning it around, in terms of sports turns, was relatively easy. Not just, but directly. Filling in the gaps in coaching — Danny Wilson arrived as lineout consultant and Matt Everard led the defense — Wigglesworth, a con man by nature, challenged his players to match him. After all, the former Scrum Huff was once one of them, so the boss gave his players the necessary tools and demanded to work hard with them. And so it was.
“We are a working class club,” says Wigglesworth. “There are other places that stand on rooftops and scream about how well they are doing and how they are doing it. We are about work. You see the building we are sitting in now [at the training ground]. It's not a flash. This is not new. It is designed to work. Players come in, do business and try to get better. This is what Steve installed a few years ago.
“The players figured it out. Who comes out and does the work? Who decided they wouldn't let [the two departures] affect them? It was the players — they picked it up and ran with it. I said that they would have to take over, lead, push, do more, and how much better it would feel — and they did.
“I can’t say that we have had too many days since they didn’t get up and give absolutely everything. It's not normal.»
However, according to defender Freddie Steward, Wigglesworth is too modest.
«The best thing about him is that he has not changed»
“A lot of the credit goes to the coaching staff and Wiggy in particular,” says Steward. “He will not take a loan, he will say that they are football players, but he became this leader and talisman for us and took up this. Since then, you've seen a group of players team up and fight for each other. It almost cheered us up.
“The best thing about Wiggy is that he didn't go one iota from a player to a manager, and that's why it was so easy for us. He's just Wiggy; The Wiggy we knew and played with. That's what's so organic about it. He makes the players want to play for him because he is our friend Wiggy, the player, but he is also a phenomenal coach. He's so special… and so competitive — that's what the players really like.»
Although there were no ups and downs, Wigglesworth remembered the victory at Clermont-Auvergne earlier in the year. Ridden by an injury crisis and after phone calls with Alex Sanderson — his Saracens teammate and rival against Sale on Sunday — Stuart Lancaster, the former England manager, and Borthwick, Wigglesworth took the inexperienced group into central France and stormed Stade Marseille. Michelin. At that moment, he realized that he had the most favorable of blank canvases on which to put his experience in rugby.
“It was a game in which I realized how special the group was, because they went out there without a whole host of players, and played with such energy and desire that you watched in awe; this group, go into a hostile environment and produce this…,” says Wigglesworth.
“That's when you realized that there was something special in the band. We had two big losses after that, but that was because of rugby and I needed to help them because that was my job. But they kept their end of the bargain in terms of how they worked.”
The «rugby thing» is subtle. However, one notable difference in the Tigers' strategy was their ruthlessness in the red zone. Since that loss to Northampton, Leicester have only averaged three points per visit against 22; now this figure is 4.2, which means a 40% increase in attack efficiency. Handre Pollard, their famous midfielder, is also connected.
World Cup winner Handre Pollard played a key role at Leicester Tigers&# 39; success this season. Photo: Getty Images/David Rogers
Now we are waiting for the sale. However, despite the storm that Wigglesworth has had to endure, and given that this may be his last match at Leicester, nothing less than a win in his native North West would be acceptable.
“Club no good. losing a semi-final is a success,” he says. “One day we will be able to look back at a season no one else will have and realize that we have learned and grown from it. Can we consider this a success? Absolutely. But is it a success — a loss in the semi-finals? Absolutely not.”
Only six of the previous 37 Premier League semi-finals have fallen in the way of the guests. This is only 16 percent. However, if this season tells us anything, it's that Leicester love to be written off.
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