Since making his Tigers debut just a week after his 20th birthday in November 2005, Tom Croft has made startling strides in the professional game.

He reached senior international status with England during the 2008 Six Nations and received a call-up to the British & Irish Lions squad for the trip to South Africa in 2009 after suspension ruled out Irish flanker Alan Quinlan. Croft wasted no time in making an impact, scoring a debut try against the Golden Lions and adding two tries in the first Test.

Nominated in Player of the Year in the 2008/09 Guinness Premiership awards and Young Player of the Year in the PRA event, he was named Man of the Match in England’s win over France in 2009 and started both the Guinness Premiership and Heineken Cup Finals in the Leicester second row.

He played in a third successive Premiership Final with Tigers in 2010, this time back in his back-row slot.

His form at the start of the 2007/08 season, highlighted by two tries in the Guinness Premiership victory at Harlequins, led to his England Test debut in the Six Nations win over France and he joined the summer tour to New Zealand.

Croft made his big breakthrough in 2006/07, beginning the season as one of the stars of the Middlesex Sevens, and going on to make 13 appearances for the first XV, scoring three tries, including a spectacular long-range effort in the EDF Energy Cup Final victory against the Ospreys.

A stunning try in a Barclays Churchill Cup Final victory over New Zealand Maori at Twickenham again showed the power and pace of the young forward who started playing rugby as an 11-year-old and spent five years at Newbury RFC before joined the Tigers Academy set-up.