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We will turn the corner says Cockerill

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Richard Cockerill says Leicester Tigers will turn a corner after a testing start to the season and that everyone will be better for sticking together.

Tigers were beaten 33-16 at Gloucester on Saturday, a third defeat after successive wins in the opening two rounds of the Aviva Premiership season.
 
Director of rugby Cockerill said: “The momentum will swing at some point, we will turn the corner. We’ll stick together and we want to see everybody show a bit of character and understanding when it is tough.
 
“We have a lot of players missing, a lot of leaders in the squad missing, but we’ll get them back at some point, we’ll keep working hard and we’ll come through it.
 
“We know it is frustrating, but we have to stick together, that’s how team sport is. Sometimes you use the negatives to make you stronger. You stay positive and work through it. We’ve got good young players who will be better for the experience.
 
“There will be some flak thrown around but we will stick together, work together and it will be rewarding when we come through it.”
 
After defeat at Kingsholm, Cockerill also defended the Tigers environment after recent criticism.
 
“We’ve had some pretty average accusations pointed at how Leicester train,” he said. “We have a really good strength and conditioning team and we monitor everything with GPS. We’ve got good people, really good professionals, good systems, and chucking mud at that environment is wrong. The people in the system do not deserve that.”
 
Brad Thorn and Michele Rizzo made their comeback from injury for their Tigers debuts on Saturday, but the game swung in a 17-minute spell leading up to half-time when Gloucester claimed three tries.
 
“I thought we actually started quite well into a strong breeze and at 9-6 we’re right in the game,” Cockerill added. “But then we had 10 or so minutes of madness. We had to reshuffle again when Mathew Tait went off injured, they had the charge-down for a try, we made some poor decisions and Gloucester took the momentum and took their opportunities. It was really hard to recover from that.
 
“We did not play as well as we could or should, and we got punished. We did some good things but some average things in between and they cost us.”