Richard Cockerill praised the spirit of his Leicester Tigers squad in sealing a second successive Aviva Premiership victory on Sunday, but said there is still plenty of room for improvement.Tigers came from behind to claim a 22-19 victory over Harlequins at Welford Road with Laurence Pearce scoring a crucial try in the 73rd minute.
“There was certainly spirit, guts and plenty of heart,” said director of rugby Cockerill.
“It wasn’t a great performance, but we take the win, the points will be huge in the season.
“We surrendered ball too easily, did not exit our own half well enough and put pressure on ourselves. We had a couple of opportunities in the first half and didn’t take them so then it becomes an arm wrestle. We’ll take the four points and move on knowing we have to get better.
“We’ll be back in at training on Tuesday morning and work even harder and get through these little bumps and progress our game.
“It was a pretty flat game and we’ve got to be better. But the win gives us a chance to develop and improve on the back of four points. When the moment comes you have to front up – and we fronted up.”
After losing Seremaia Bai after less than 10 minutes, Owen Williams came off the bench to play at centre and then moved to fly-half when Tommy Bell was also lost to injury in the closing stages.
“It’s great to get Owen back out on the pitch and he’s got almost a full game under his belt,” said Cockerill. “He’s has a great attitude and I thought he did really well at 12 and 10. The kick to the corner off the outside of the boot was as good as you will see and the forwards got the energy to score from that. The conversion was huge for us too.”
Tigers gave a debut to scrum-half Ben White who became the club’s youngest-ever Premiership player. Click here for more details.
Cockerill added: “That is how tight the Premiership can be. We’ve got the England guys back and Niki Goneva back, there are a few more bodies to come back in shortly and we will get better with time together. We’re under no illusions, though, we know we have to keep improving.”
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A good win but we still need to improve - Cockerill
26 October 2015 12:49
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