Leicester Tigers vs Bath: ‘You’re just a bit embarrassed that you even let it happen,' reflects Tom Youngs
It has not been a great few months for Tom Youngs but the Leicester and England hooker is determined to make amends – starting with Sunday’s showdown against Bath
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Humble pie is nothing like the natural diet of a hooker, but Tom Youngs has been obliged to eat a lot of it of late. His club Leicester finished last season in the Premiership semi-finals with the second of two humiliating 40-plus-point thumpings by their great rivals Bath, whom they meet again at Welford Road today.And it is only a still-raw eight weeks since England were knocked out of their own World Cup with a scrummaging performance against Australia at Twickenham, with a chastening six penalties conceded, that Youngs admits was second-best.
“I think going out of a home World Cup would top most things,” Youngs says, when asked which hurt most, England’s elimination or Leicester losing 45-0 and 47-10 at Bath last season. “But in club terms that was the worst experience I’ve ever had. Leicester’s quite an intense place and it does affect you.
“My next-door neighbours are big Tigers fans. When you leave the house you try not to talk to them for a couple of days and let it settle. You’re just a bit embarrassed that you even let it happen.”
During the remainder of the World Cup, Youngs flicked on the TV to watch the knockout rounds, though “not religiously”, and he tried to enjoy the final won by New Zealand over Australia, as “a spectacle of rugby”. And, yes, he says, they were the best two sides in the tournament. “New Zealand were quality all the way through and I thought Australia were very good beating us at our place and they were very good beating Wales when they were down to 13 men.”
As you might imagine, these utterances are being made through gritted teeth, for Youngs has not earned 31 Test caps for England and the British & Irish Lions by bowing meekly to tough challenges. He was converted from centre to hooker by the former Leicester coach Heyneke Meyer six years ago, and if a big worry going into the World Cup without the banned Dylan Hartley was over accurate throwing, Youngs answered it emphatically with a ratio of 93 per cent of line-outs won on his throw.
Just as hearteningly, Opta Statistics show he had a 92 per cent success rate from 131 throws in the Premiership last season – third best in the league and ahead of all his England rivals, Dylan Hartley of Northampton, Jamie George (Saracens) and Bath’s Rob Webber.
But rugby is a game of contradictions and as Youngs is quick to mention, the line-out is a collective discipline among the forwards, not one man. And, anyway, England’s notorious throw to Chris Robshaw, delivered by Webber, near the end of the World Cup defeat to Wales would have counted as a “win”, even though it was probably the wrong idea, and poorly executed by the captain and those around him.
The significance of all of this is that the new England head coach, Eddie Jones, will be naming a squad in January for the Six Nations Championship, and Youngs, Hartley, George and Webber – but not, for the time being, the injured Exeter hooker Luke Cowan-Dickie – are among those bidding to be in it.
“Set-piece will always be a massive part of the game,” says Youngs, who is aware of Jones’s public promise to make England’s traditional forward strength a central feature on his watch.
“That is the English game – set-piece, set-piece, set-piece, and then there’s little sprinkles outside it, just to help ease a few more tries. Actually against Wales we dominated the scrum but no one writes about that. Against Fiji we won lots of penalties but we lost the ball on our own five-metre line and they scored from it, so it highlights the issue. We shouldn’t have let that happen. Australia came and scrummed well and we didn’t quite get the dominance we wanted.”
Youngs believes too many tighthead props are getting away with scrummaging crookedly, but he has nothing negative to say about Hartley’s renewed availability after the suspension for head-butting last May that saw the Northampton No 2 omitted from the World Cup. The choice at the heart of the front row will be a fascinating call by Jones, who himself is a former hooker in common with the Leicester boss Richard Cockerill, as well as Wales’s Warren Gatland. “Obviously I’m slightly biased and I’d pick Tom in front of Dylan every day,” says Cockerill. “However, I think there’s a lot to like about Dylan as well and there’s a big drop off from where those two are to where the rest [in England] are at this moment.”
Webber might fancy debunking that view this afternoon and at 116kgs, the Bath man is 12kgs heavier than Youngs, while both Hartley and George weigh in at 109kgs. Heft, of course, is not the only component of good scrummaging but it has its implications if Jones’s England intend to pick comparatively light second-rows such as Courtney Lawes. Last weekend in European competition, Bath’s scrum was witheringly impressive against Leinster, while Youngs and friends for Leicester kicked off a big win in Treviso by forcing a set-piece penalty try.
“Just Bath v Leicester is enough to give it spice,” says Youngs. “It doesn’t come to an individual battle.”
Leicester v Bath: Kick-off 3pm, BT Sport 1
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