Rugby Coaching Blog | Professional Rugby Advice & Coaching

Dan Cole, the Leicester and England prop forward reflects on training at Leicester Tigers:

That was where we got beaten up and brought into the Leicester way. It’s not as bad nowadays as it was. I wasn’t part of the first team when Johnson was around and you would hear stories about him knocking out Lewis Moody, but the week before the semi-final against Bath we had a scrap in training when it all kicked off.
We try to make training harder on a Tuesday than the match at the weekend, and we were practising mauls off line-outs, firsts against seconds, when it got a bit feisty. Louis Deacon ended it. He didn’t start it, but he ended it.

Train as we play. Rugby is a physical game. It is also a mentally physcial game. Players have to be able to get through awkward situations where they are wound up. How you deal with this can be crucial at the key moment in a game. Don’t let’s kid ourselves that the opposition will keep quiet and not do cheeky, naughty things to our team whilst the referee is not looking.

Leicester Tigers tough it out on the training field. They have a long record of success at domestic and European level.