Cockerill: Wants sharper Tigers
Leicester boss Richard Cockerill urged his side to up their game despite seeing his side start the season with back-to-back wins in the Aviva Premiership.
The Tigers beat Worcester 34-26 at Welford Road on Saturday following last week's win away from home against top flight newcomers London Welsh.
But even though Leicester scored five tries to Worcester's two in front of the Tigers' faithful at Welford Road, Cockerill was far from satisfied.
"It's a perfect start if you look at the table," Cockerill said. "But it was far from perfect performance-wise. But we will take the points.
"We did some really good things and we are creating a huge amount of opportunities but we also turned the ball over too much. We just played ourselves into trouble.
"It's easily fixed but our mindset needs to be better than that."
England centre Manu Tuilagi gave Leicester the perfect start with two tries in the opening 12 minutes.
"Manu has had some criticism but within our structure he plays really well and gets opportunities to run with the ball," Cockerill said.
"You saw his raw power and his ability to make something from nothing. He is still very young but me and (coach) Matt O'Connor think he will be the best 13 in world rugby in the next 12 months."
Elsewhere Bath were left sweating on the fitness of Matt Banahan after the England wing faced a scan on his knee after limping off towards the end of the west country club's 30-23 win at home to Wasps.
"Matt has damaged his knee and we will know more about it in the next 48 hours, he will go to have a scan and we will wait and see what the results are, but he has been put in a brace," said Bath skills coach Brad Davis.
In other matches Gloucester beat London Irish 40-31 as the Exiles shipped 40 points for the second match in a row following last week's 40-3 defeat by Saracens, who on Saturday saw fly-half Charlie Hodgson return to haunt former club Sale with 20 points in a 23-16 victory.
Friday saw Premiership champions Harlequins make it two wins from two league matches with a 40-3 thrashing of London Welsh.
"I was delighted with the way we started, with the directness and the tempo we would want," said Harlequins boss Conor O'Shea.
"You can't score six tries to nil and not be relatively happy," the former Ireland full-back added.
Quins fly-half Nick Evans, who kicked all five of his conversions Friday, is reported to be considering his options for next season, and O'Shea said he was keen to keep the former All Blacks pivot.
"Everyone at Harlequins wants him and hopefully he will be here," O'Shea said. "We will do our talking behind the scenes."
Comments
rugby_rockstar says...
Well with a visit to saracens this weekend we'll see just how good our attack is and how leaky our defense is. I think our attack will just about pass muster, but I'm worried about our defense. Its leaky and this weekend its going to come down to the odd missed tackle or positional balls up.
A marked improvement is required.
Posted 13:26 13th September 2012
Centre12 says...
A lot of people don't seem to like old Cockers too much, but I have to have that say that he has done well as a coach and he always recruits well, my only slight concern was with him letting 12Trees go to the Cherry & Whites.
Tuilagi the best #13 in world rugby in the next 12 months, that would be interesting, England just need to get a #12 that can create space for Tuilagi, also a decent offload would do wonders with the likes of Foden & Ashton running off his shoulder
Posted 04:14 11th September 2012
physiodan says...
if you demand perfection can you ever be happy?
Posted 18:54 10th September 2012
APV1 says...
Is he ever happy?
Posted 14:50 10th September 2012
ArmchairGeneral says...
Even this year Manu was already very nearly equal to PDV / F Steyn. Conrad Smith / BOD is a completly different player. If Tuilagi develops awareness of best option and an off load then he should be the best.
London Irish shipped 80 points already: has Edwards not started as defence coach yet??
Posted 14:48 10th September 2012
lawynd says...
I don't know about "...the best 13 in world rugby in the next 12 months," given that would mean playing better than the likes of Conrad Smith, Frans Steyn (although he's better at full-back in my opinion), but he's got the ability to be very, very good. It's up to England to utilise him properly, however.
Posted 11:34 10th September 2012