For the majority of the season, Harriet Roberts appearances for Leicester Tigers were from full-back, with Sunday’s game at home to Bishop Auckland her first start on the wing. The Tigers flyer duly rewarded the coach’s faith in her versatility, scoring a quartet of tries in a big win for the home side. We had a chat with Roberts after the match to see how it feels scoring her first tries at the stadium and the evolution of the side as a whole.

First hat-trick for Leicester Tigers today, how does that feel?

Scoring any try for Tigers is incredible but, those are my first tries at Mattioli Woods Welford Road and it means that much more when you’ve got family, friends and all the supporters in the crowd cheering you on. So, to score a hat-trick here is just magic.

Does it still feel surreal, running out the tunnel, hearing that music pumping?

It really gets the whole team going. In a normal match you run out and there’s a bit of an atmosphere but here with so many supporters and everything going on with the guards of honour, kids waving flags and everything, it gets everyone that bit more hyped up and ready to play.

Are you looking to keep that momentum of the unbeaten season going into next season with a new league in the Premier 15s?

I am so excited. It’s been a long journey and we had the calls last May which decided whether or not we would make the training squad for this season and since then everyone has worked so hard, for this exact goal. Obviously, we know going in that anyone would struggle to have that same kind of winning streak in the Premier 15s, but we are so ready to take our game to the next level and see what we can do against the best the game has to offer.

Sticking with this season then, the attack is looking absolutely electric and everything seems to be clicking. How does it feel to be putting 60/70 points consistently on that scoreboard?

It shows how much we’ve grown as a team since those early games. At the start of the season, against the same level of opposition, we weren’t putting that many points on the board and it felt we were a bit more disjointed comparatively. Now, however, everything feels so connected and even if we do make mistakes, the support is there from everyone to reset and go again. It really feels like we’ve just continued to build and build as a team.

Absolutely and you can see that connection not only in attack but in defence. One of the biggest roars of the afternoon was when the team was on the 5 metre line, defending doggedly, so, finally, how good does the clean sheet feel?

Of course the win is always our main target but our other big aim is to keep the clean sheet and even just keep the opposition out of our half. We let our standards slip in allowing the opposition to get that close, but it shows our connection as a side that we were able to rally around one another, grit our teeth and ride that tough period, again showing how we’ve grown as a team since the start of the season.