Michael Cheika’s replacement will be Leicester Tigers’ ninth head coach in as many years.
We are not quite in Watford Football Club territory but that statistic is still jarring. Instability has become the Welford Road watchword.
If the hectic turnover was some kind of advanced Moneyball-style, modern metric-driven act of creative thinking then fair enough. Whatever it takes to bring success. But success has been sporadic at best at Leicester since the Richard Cockerill era ended.
From Aaron Mauger to Matt O’Connor to Geordan Murphy and on to Cheika via Steve Borthwick, Richard Wigglesworth and Dan McKellar… join the dots and the result is an incoherent picture in terms of styles and personalities. There doesn’t seem to have been a great deal of rhyme or reason to any of it.
The latest change was flagged up in January when Cheika announced his intention to move on after one season. But, three months on, replacing arguably the highest-profile Premiership signing of the season is threatening to turn into another thumping headache for the club.
Leicester had hoped Cheika might stay beyond the end of his initial 12-month, £500,000 per season contract. He chose not to, despite the offer of a 50 per cent pay rise. The Tigers then targeted Paul Gustard as his replacement but Stade Francais wanted to hold onto the former England defence coach for the final year of his contract. The Tigers balked at a £500,000 compensation fee.
The latest links with Australian Scott Johnson are eyebrow-raising. Surely, they can do better than a 62-year-old whose last club coaching job, with the Ospreys, ended in 2012?
Forced back to square one, they have cast their net far and wide with what appears to be an increasing air of desperation. The latest links with former All Black Leon MacDonald are at least more encouraging than those touting Scott Johnson for the job. Surely, Tigers could do better than a 62-year-old whose last club coaching role, with the Ospreys, ended in 2012?
By virtue of their storied history and their loyal fanbase, expectations are high at Leicester.
They should be. For all their uneven results over recent seasons, they remain one of the biggest clubs in England, if not the biggest. This is the Manchester United of English rugby.
Fall short of those expectations and there will inevitably be consequences but even so the spin rate of the revolving door in and out of the head coach’s office has been alarming.
Succession planning is an artform for any sporting organisation and it is one Leicester have had plenty of practice at but the board’s hit rate has been distinctly patchy. The addition of Leon Lloyd, a Heineken Cup winner with the club in 2001 and 2002, to the board three weeks ago was a tacit admission of the need for additional high-end rugby knowledge there.
In the positive corner sits the appointment of Borthwick. He delivered the Premiership title in 2022 – the club’s first for nine years – and took them to a European final. It was a Challenge Cup rather than the Champions Cup but it was a final all the same. In his grindingly attritional way, Borthwick brought the good times back to the Tigers.
Cheika has overseen a welcome improvement with the Tigers lying third and on course for the play-off place that should be the minimum annual requirement of a club of their size.
His successor Wigglesworth, although only in place for a very brief period before following Borthwick to the national side, also did a good job in guiding Leicester into the play-offs and starting to evolve the Tigers’ game.
The others though, up until Cheika, were, frankly, flops.
When the charismatic Australian took over the Tigers were coming off the back of a bitterly disappointing eighth-place finish in the Premiership under the miscast McKellar last season.
Cheika has overseen a welcome improvement with the Tigers lying third and on course for the play-off place that should be the minimum annual requirement of a club of their size. A semi-final spot isn’t in the bag yet with the table congested and away fixtures at the top two, Bristol and Bath, to come on their run-in but their fate is in their own hands with five games of the regular season left.
Even if Leicester are not what they once were – Europe ended with a whimper at Glasgow in the last 16 following an 80-point humiliation in Toulouse earlier in the tournament, they have picked up under the former Wallabies coach.
But, however much of a coup it was to land a figurehead of Cheika’s standing, the brevity of his stay means, for all the good things he has brought, there is once again no sense of continuity.
Leicester probably knew what they were getting into with a coach whose family were half a world away in Australia, one with a burning desire to coach rugby league in the NRL as well. Even so there seems to have been an element of crossing their fingers, looking skywards and hoping for the best Leicester would get sufficiently deep into Cheika’s bloodstream for him to extend his contract.
That hasn’t happened. So the next appointment is going to be critical.
Can the Leicester hierarchy be trusted to get this one right? Can the measured momentum of this season be maintained?
Which number 10 worth his salt wouldn’t want to know who he was playing for ahead of committing his future to a new club? Argentina captain Julian Montoya is leaving at the end of the season as well.
Whoever takes over will have a decent squad at their disposal built, as Leicester should be, on a strong pack. They have England internationals powering them up front in Ollie Chessum, George Martin and Joe Heyes as well as two more behind in scrum-half Jack van Poortvliet and full-back Freddie Steward.
The average of that quintet is 24 so the building blocks are there. But, because of the head coach hiatus, things are in danger of slipping on the recruitment front.
With Handre Pollard leaving at the end of the season, the Tigers do not have a replacement stand-off, for instance. Which number 10 worth his salt wouldn’t want to know who he was playing for ahead of committing his future to a new club? Argentina captain Julian Montoya is leaving at the end of the season as well.
In a competitive market, one in which the Premiership clubs face an uphill financial battle with the Top 14 and the Japanese League, the Tigers cannot afford to dawdle.
Leicester need their next head coach in place quickly.
More importantly though, they need the right man. They need someone able to put down roots and bring a sense of long-termism to a club which gives off the impression they are making it up as they go along.
