Cockers learned his trade in an environment alongside hard-bitten characters like Dean Richards and John Wells. With Darren Garforth and Graham Rowntree at his side, he helped to establish the ABC Club as a cornerstone of the club’s mentality. No quarter was given or expected, no challenge avoided and no battle unfought.
It was a tough place to be then and it is a tough environment now, even in the more sanitised world of professional rugby.
Cockers knows exactly what it takes to come through that tough breeding ground and the qualities needed within the people around you just as much as inside your own core.
As director of rugby, he uses that to find, coach and select his players.
The club ethos of putting the team first – and for that matter second and third too – ahead of any individual needs, to help keep everyone’s head level and expectations high.
Generations have been brought up on that ethos, even at a club which has been blessed with such individual talents as Rory Underwood, Les Cusworth, Austin Healey and Geordan Murphy, to name just four.
The team is just as strong behind the scenes, with coaches, the strength & conditioning department, physios and medics among those who keep the Tigers ticking.
Today they put all of those qualities on the line one more time. All for the good of the Leicester Tigers.
