The 26-year-old, who appeared in 11of the club’s last 12 fixtures after enduring a 10-month injury lay off, is keen to banish the disappointment of defeat to London Wasps by putting things right on the training field as soon as possible.
“Personally, I can’t wait for pre-season, and I am sure the rest of the lads echo that,” says Ellis.
“The lads are excited about getting a good pre-season behind us and coming back fighting next year. We’re not the type of guys to just lie down and mill things over. We all want to put things right and we’ll endeavour to do that in pre-season.”
The 26-14 loss at Twickenham was Tigers’ second final defeat of the year and, although the 2007 champions came close to another Guinness Premiership crown, Ellis takes no satisfaction from finishing as runners up.
“Coming second isn’t what we want. We want to win everything and that’s what we strive to do. We’re all absolutely gutted. We’re gutted for ourselves, for the coaches and for the fans. We’re most disappointed for the fans who came down to support us. That’s the big thing that hurts.
“Leicester is a big, successful club and we demand success. We’ve fallen short this season and we’ll work hard to put things right. I’m sure we’ll all pull together and we’ll listen to what the coaches have to say and we’ll learn from them. We’ll be professional in pre-season and we’ll be working as hard as we can to be successful.”
Having staged remarkable comebacks in the two previous Premiership fixtures against Harlequins and Gloucester, Tigers almost repeated the feat in front of a World record club crowd on Saturday. This time, though, the 23-6 half-time deficit proved too much to overcome, despite second-half tries from Ellis and Tom Varndell.
“It’s a real shame that we couldn’t quite do it the end. We never give up and, although we went a few points behind in the first half, we always had that belief that we could still do it. We have that never give up attitude and that nearly got us through, like it did against Gloucester and Harlequins.
“All credit to Wasps. They were good at the breakdown and they counter rucked well. They did well in the contact area and sometimes we were on the backfoot and gave away stupid penalties. You want to be going forward to get some momentum. We did that in patches, but for the majority of the game, we didn’t have that.
“We knew at half-time that we had to stop giving away silly penalties and that we needed to try and dominate the contact area a bit better. We did that in patches but, ultimately, we were disappointed. We didn’t do the tings that we said we would, particularly in the first period. That’s the disappointing thing. We were really good in training but we let ourselves down on the day.
“No one wants to lose a final. We got this far when people didn’t expect us do that and we have to take heart from that but we know there are a lot of things we need to work on in pre-season. Obviously, I’m pleased personally to be back playing and I’m looking forward to having a good, hard pre-season and coming back as fit as I can next year. I want to be starting fresh next season and putting the things that we’ve fallen short on right.”
