Ed Slater: I’m not at Leicester on a fast track to England

Slater has an educated approach to his captaincy

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In Leicester Tigers’ cosmopolitan team of half a dozen nationalities who will face Munster in the European Champions Cup today, it is the personalities that count, according to Ed Slater, the English club’s captain.

Slater is damning of past players who went to Welford Road because they “felt the club could give them something – thinking if they came here and played well, they could play for England or have instant success. That’s not really the attitude. When the club has been successful it has been off the back of a lot of hard work.

“In the past two or three years we have had people in the squad who haven’t bought into what we are about and have disrupted that process. It’s only been a handful and thankfully those people have gone and the guys who have come in have been really good.”

The Leicester newcomers include southern-hemisphere forwards Mike Williams, Brendon O’Connor, Mike Fitzgerald and Lachlan McCaffrey. They have found a kindred spirit in Slater who, though Leicester-born and schooled in Milton Keynes, made his greatest leap forward by playing in Australia between the ages of 18 to 22. Now 27, he was appointed captain of England’s 10-times league champions during the 2013-14 season.

“I came to the Tigers in 2010 and I’ve always been fascinated with this Leicester way of doing things,” he said. “It used to be players like Louis Deacon and George Chuter who had been through the successful period [the late 1990s into the 2000s]. Once they went, you realise you and the people around you are the ones who have to carry it on.

“We are lucky we still have people who are Leicester through and through – Richard Cockerill [the director of rugby], the Youngs brothers, Manu Tuilagi: he went to school in Hinckley. It’s my only professional club, and the club I supported. The lessons you learn from the old boys get passed through us.”

The rising salary cap and increased competition for players has broadened most Premiership clubs’ outlook. Looking at the two countries who reached the World Cup final, 185 out of 200 players in Australia’s five Super Rugby squads for 2016 are qualified to play for the Wallabies; in New Zealand just six of the 195 players in their five Super Rugby teams are classed as “foreign”. The ratio of English-qualified players to foreigners in England’s 12 Premiership clubs is much lower – 72 per cent last season. And now England have an Australian in new head coach Eddie Jones.

It has generated debate over how difficult it may be for England to find a style, and Cockerill has cautioned against copying New Zealand.

Slater said: “What he was trying to say is it’s a different game in the northern hemisphere. Our league structure, the long season through the winter when it’s difficult to play expansive rugby. Other teams will have strong set-pieces, so you have to be strong in that area. You have to be able to take it up the middle too.”

Slater is as much of a thinking man’s captain as it is possible to have in a second-row hard nut who can do back-row service too – he prepares for matches by answering specific challenges.

Last Saturday his Tigers set three records for a team playing away to Munster in Europe by winning 31-19 in Limerick: the first visitors to win twice there, and it was the Irish province’s biggest margin of defeat and the first time they failed to earn a match point.

“We could have gone kick, kick, kick for the first 30 minutes but we picked the right moment to test them out,” says Slater, recalling the rolling maul that shattered Munster’s defence in the lead-up to the first of Leicester’s three tries. But he is quick to emphasise today’s rematch remains crucial to the outcome of Pool Four.

Slater played in Sydney for the “Beasties” of Eastern Suburbs and then made it into a New South Wales Waratahs A-team with future Wallabies Peter Betham (now at Leicester) and Scott Sio.

He reveals that if a contact in Sydney hadn’t urged Leicester to bring him home, he might still be in Australia. Instead, in the summer of 2014, Slater captained a non-cap England team including Alex Goode, Anthony Watson and Danny Cipriani to a 38-7 win over the Crusaders on tour in New Zealand. But in the same match he damaged knee ligaments and missed most of last season, though he was still rated highly enough to make the initial 50-man squad for the World Cup.

An earlier knee injury in the Premiership title-winning final of 2013 had cost Slater an England tour to Argentina.

“I have never met Eddie Jones but I have heard he is clear and direct,” says Slater. “When I was in Sydney I was playing with Australian schools caps who had higher skill levels, and I had to open up to keep up. I love making contributions in the open field, but I relish the discipline you need in the forwards just as much. I like it when you watch a try back and see every little thing that went into making it.”

* Saints boss Jim Mallinder said absent England flanker Tom Wood would miss “another week or two” with an injured shoulder. He also declared himself unhappy with England for making an approach to Alex King without contacting the club first.