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White: “You can’t sit around and sulk”

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Leicester Tigers scrum-half Ben White has laid bare the mental toll of a bruising block of Premiership games.

The 22-year-old – already a key leader in the Leicester squad – took part in an early-morning media session just hours after returning from the loss at Bristol, before diving into the club’s preparations for the final fixture of the league season.

“Obviously, it wasn’t a good enough performance from us last night,” he said. “I don’t think we did ourselves or our fans justice at all.

“It’s a brutal lesson for an inexperienced squad, but we’ve got to take things from it and review it individually and take the learnings from it.

“I know it sounds clichéd, but that’s the truth of the matter. You have to learn from your mistakes.

“You learn most from your mistakes. And we have to move on quickly, because there’s another game at the weekend.”

“You can’t sit around and sulk.”

Ben White

Tigers face Harlequins in Round 22 of the Gallagher Premiership at Welford Road on Sunday (October 4, 3.00pm).

And White revealed how he has already wrung every lesson from defeat at Ashton Gate in readiness for the final-day fixture.

He explained: “I’m sure if you asked any of the lads, probably one of my biggest work-ons is that I struggle to get away from it mentally.

“I think I’ve already watched the game over once at least, maybe twice, by trawling through clips to try and learn as much as I can.

“With these short turnarounds you probably watch the previous game through three or four times and you watch your opponents all the time, so you don’t have much time to switch off.

“But I’m a rugby player. I want to play, I want to learn, and I want to develop, and if there’s a game in two days’ time then I have to learn and develop for it.”

Though he admitted the importance of moving on quickly in order to shift focus on the next challenge.

“We’re all only human, but the thing is when you have got a short turnaround you can’t sit around and sulk,” he said.

“You have to review the game and learn from it, and then move on to your next opponent.

“We’ll do everything in the next couple of days to prepare ourselves right to be able to do that.”