Leicester Tigers 2019-20

There’s been a lot more running involved than last season, but I feel really good. We’re a lot more structured and there’s more explanation of why we’re doing particular things than there might have been in the past.

formerly known as Sam wrote:
Home kit looks traditional enough to pass though I wish they'd lighten the green again and move it towards what the academy are wearing. Incidentally if they ever decided to market the academy kit they'd make an absolute killing as there's a serious demand for the traditional style kit they wear.

LondonTiger wrote:There were 3 I think. 

The pale green one (circa 97/98 colours) with a "J" on teh back.
A Blue one similar to the away kit from 2002ish with a "B" on the back.
Plus I think there was an "O" shirt.

LondonTiger wrote:https://www.leicestertigers.com/news/reffell-eager-to-complete-final-fortnight

This quote is a rather damning indictment on last years pre-season:

There’s been a lot more running involved than last season, but I feel really good. We’re a lot more structured and there’s more explanation of why we’re doing particular things than there might have been in the past.

LondonTiger wrote:Times reporting that the club are still in discussions with Borthwick, with a view to joining set up after 6Ns.

formerly known as Sam wrote:Leicester Tigers (v Gloucester Rugby, Welford Road, Saturday 3.00pm)

15 Telusa Veainu      

14 Jonah Holmes

13 Andy Forsyth

12 Tom Hardwick

11 Jordan Olowofela

10 Noel Reid

9 Sam Harrison

1 Greg Bateman

2 Tom Youngs (c)

3 Nephi Leatigaga

4 Harry Wells

5 Calum Green

6 Hanro Liebenberg

7 Guy Thompson

8 Sione Kalamafoni

Replacements

16 Tatafu Polota-Nau

17 Facundo Gigena

18 Joe Heyes

19 Tomás Lavanini

20 Ifereimi Boladau

21 Ben White

22 George Worth

23 Adam Thompstone

Gloucester Rugby: 15 Tom Marshall, 14 Matt Banahan, 13 Billy Twelvetrees, 12 Mark Atkinson, 11 Ollie Thorley, 10 Danny Cipriani, 9 Joe Simpson; 1 Josh Hohneck, 2 Franco Marais, 3 Fraser Balmain, 4 Ed Slater (c), 5 Gerbrandt Grobler, 6 Ruan Ackermann, 7 Jake Polledri, 8 Ben Morgan
Replacements: 16 Corné Fourie, 17 Val Rapava Ruskin, 18 Jamal Ford-Robinson, 19 Freddie Clarke, 20 Lewis Ludlow, 21 Callum Braley, 22 Chris Harris, 23 Jason Woodward

Oh crumbs we could be in for another tough afternoon. Gloucester are barely missing any of their big names, that looks a very handy side. I don't feel so assured by what we have.

formerly known as Sam wrote:Blue, agree completely on Hardwick and Reid. Very odd call that, hopefully they'll interchange as they did in the second half of last week when Hardwick got us moving wide. We could really do with some physicality through the centres, Taute's injury really is unfortunate, he'd be a handy focal point at 12 or 13. If we'd picked up the losing bonus points that we just let slip through our fingers the start to the season wouldn't be so bad.

Gooseberry, Geordie has a vision of where he wants to take Tigers to. I think under him we are moving in the right direction in many areas but he isn't the head coach we need. The move to DOR where he can continue the pathway integration between academy to development squad to senior team. Where he can focus on developing the squad back to a good mix of age and ability, the squad balance is much better this season after the back heavy investment previously. Hopefully that aside Borthwick's tendency to coach very intense and combative sides should be good.

bluestonevedder wrote:What are people's thoughts on Liebenberg so far?

LondonTiger wrote:

bluestonevedder wrote:What are people's thoughts on Liebenberg so far?

Ambivalent so far.

formerly known as Sam wrote:Williams was one of the worst signings in recent years. Just a complete liability, missed tackles and stupid penalties were his trademarks. Add that to his ineffectual carrying and seemingly absent set of rugby skills I was happy to see him go. He'd occasionally make a massive hit and leave someone trying to count their ribs but that was far too infrequent.

Liebenburg seems smarter and more astute. The one dumb penalty against Glaws aside, that ball wasn't out. At 24 he's already a bit of a leader and his work rate is very good. We needed someone to do the grunt work, it is noticeable this season how every ruck we have is no longer a lottery of whether we will get the ball back and we actually get some quick ball.

Gooseberry wrote:
...

On that note itll be interesting to see what happens with 6 nations picks. Genge, May, Ford and Tuilagi are almost certain to be called up but Cole and Youngs? Coles the wrong side of 32 and not a realistic contender for the future, but is still a force at test level. Youngs let England down in the final but wheres the pressure coming from?

As much as a like seeing proper career Tigers players like those two in England shirts it would be handy for the club to have them around a bit more.

David Walsh in the Times wrote:A sunny afternoon in August three months ago. Greg Bateman looked fit, ready for the new season. Over coffees, we skimmed the surface of his life. How at 20 he was running a small company that sold training courses for HGV drivers. He made the pitches, earned more money than he knew what to do with and then gave it all up.

He needed to know if he could be a rugby player. Accepting a pay cut, he moved in with his sister Erica and joined London Welsh. After that it was on to Exeter Chiefs and for the last four years he was a Leicester Tiger. This afternoon he will be in the team who take on London Irish at the Madejski stadium.

That meeting in August followed on from a Instagram message a few weeks before. He had written about struggling with his mental health for the previous two years. Endless nights where he couldn’t sleep, once leaving his bed at 4am to paint the garden fence.

He is 5ft 10in, 18.5st and not much that isn’t muscle. The motivation for publicly admitting to mental health problems was to encourage those similarly affected. The bad times forced him to work out who he really was. He discovered that a naturally enthusiastic and energetic man had a vulnerable side.

The break-up of his marriage and his former wife and their two children moving to Devon was the catalyst for the disintegration of his mental health. “I really struggled with the kids moving away,” he says. “I would go to bed feeling exhausted from training and be ready to shut my eyes but my heart would start pounding. I’d start sweating. I would just be there in a dark room, staring at the ceiling having all sorts of thoughts. It got to a point where I didn’t feel like I really wanted to be around. Then you’d think, ‘Did I really think that I might not want to be here? Has that actually crossed my mind?’”


Books, podcasts, a glass of red wine at 3.30am, opiates, he tried everything to get to sleep. Sometimes he would drift off only to wake up, panic-stricken. “There were active dark dreams where I wake up, no idea where I am, adrenaline pumping,” he says. “There is one particular dream I get emotional even talking about. I’m on a canal boat with my son and daughter. I’ve never been on a canal boat in my life, but my little boy is running around with his little sister when he falls in. I jump in to get him and I’m trying to lift him out but my legs are stuck in silt and I’m drowning while trying to save him. F***, it’s awful thinking about that.

“Just this terror, my son is going to die, I’m going to die, then you wake up and you’re so out of breath and it feels so scary. You talk to the psychiatrist and psychologist and they explain this is how anxiety works. You’re afraid of not being able to see the kids all the time.”

So many nights when he couldn’t sleep, or couldn’t get back to sleep. Some days he trained on empty. He told a few senior players at the Tigers. It wasn’t something he wanted to put out there. “It is a physical game, especially in my position,” he says. “You are taking on that bloke two inches away from your face and he wants to ram his spine through yours. I don’t want him to know I’ve been sad. I want him to think I’m the toughest bloke that’s ever lived.”

Twelve months ago, Tigers played Gloucester at Kingsholm. A Friday-night game that couldn’t have gone worse. Fraser Balmain was his direct opponent, the same Fraser who had been at Leicester and was his mate. That evening Balmain won a scrum penalty against him. That just crushed him.

“I was in the changing room afterwards and I was on my way down to see the kids [in Devon], and my head was gone. I couldn’t look at anyone. I couldn’t talk to anyone. I don’t want to do this anymore. I was distraught. Why not just work at Sainsbury’s in Devon, see the kids all the time? How had my life ended up like this?

“Tommy, I sit next to Tommy Youngs in the changing room, could see I was gone and he said, ‘Mate, I’ll drive you down to Devon’. People come to play against Leicester, they think the M1, the Narborough Road, they don’t realise there’s a group of rugby players there, like a little family, who would do anything for you.”

It was Mattie Toomua who opened his mind to the benefits of medication. “I’d always been really hard on myself, ‘Greg, stop being a fanny’. I didn’t want to take meds. ‘Mattie,’ I said, ‘I take them and it will feel like I’ve lost.’ He said, ‘Yeah, but mate if you had a bad leg, you would take something for your leg’. He made it black and white for me. You’re either going to get better or you’re not. It’s up to you.”

Last January, Bateman started on 15mg of the anti-depressant Mirtazapine, rising to 30mg. The pills came with side-effects but allowed him to sleep. The challenge was then not to oversleep. He worked with a psychologist, spoke to a psychiatrist and though he would continue to cry when saying goodbye to the kids, talking helped.

After the kids went back to Devon, his girlfriend Amy would ask how he was. “It is like fitness training,” he would tell her. “It doesn’t get less difficult, it doesn’t get easier, you just get better at dealing with the pain.”

He sat in a room with the psychiatrist and thought, ‘We have never met and you expect me to tell you my innermost fears and darkest secrets’. It was uncomfortable but necessary. He now has a weekly diary where everything is scheduled; training, FaceTime conversations with the kids, walks with the dog, study periods for his MBA and if there’s half a day, a few holes of golf.

At Tigers, he knows his mates keep an eye on him. Tom and Ben Youngs, Toomua and the others, they notice his moods. “Come on Bateman, that’s enough. Get on with it.” Other times he will get a text in the evening: “Mate, we’re coming around to your place with a bottle. We’re going to get you right.”

The bad weeks still happen but he now understands they will pass. He believes in where the Tigers are trying to go under Geordan Murphy and believes he can be a part of the club’s renewal. The challenge of the MBA excites him and he’s got two fledgeling businesses, one coffee-based, the other beer-based.

The Instagram post in August coincided with the day he stopped taking Mirtazapine. Schooled now in the vagaries of the mind, he hasn’t thrown away his unused supply. “They say you never get rid of anxiety and depression, you just manage it,” he said. “On Instagram it wasn’t me saying I don’t need medication anymore, it was me letting people know that I had been on medication and I may well need to go back on it at some point.”

Richard Cockerill was his first coach at Leicester Tigers. In Matt Hampson’s compelling memoir Engage, Cockerill talked about something that may apply to Bateman. “Brave people,” he said, “aren’t the ones that are born tough. They are the ones that do things they are actually scared of but they will do them because they need to be done.”