Edward Newman, Leicester

THE Leicester Tigers name may be synonymous with its Welford Road stadium but the place where the hard yards on match-week are made and where tactics are hatched takes place at their impressive training facilities five miles from the city’s centre, in the suburb of Oadby.

At Leicester’s train station, the taxi driver doesn’t need any directions - mention the Tigers training ground – Oval Park - and without a second glance he turns swiftly into the mid-morning traffic, talking passionately about last weekend’s Guinness Premiership final. The Tigers are a big conversation piece in a city where the passion for rugby and soccer run deep.

At Oval Park, the car-park is filling up with its share of BMWs, Mercedes and SUVs as players from England’s most successful club arrive for training. The clubhouse replaced what one local calls an ‘an old shack’ and was built by the Tigers Board when they decided to move from the city centre at the beginning of Dean Richards’ reign. It’s managed by amateur side, Oadby RFC, who continue to play on one of the adjacent pitches. Richard Cockerill’s office, along with club’s training staff sit in this clubhouse, and beside it, on elevated ground, is the Tigers Academy Training Centre, a state-of-the-art facility where future Tigers are bred.

It’s their Heineken Cup press day, and a large media contingent has descended on their leafy suburban headquarters off Wigston Road. In recent years the club’s bosses have tended to hold these days ay Oadby Town Football Club which sits opposite the Tigers Training ground. Apparently before the switch, supporters were allowed into press conferences, and any news that shouldn’t have leaked out, well, leaked out.

Like its team, the Tigers media team run a pretty slick operation. For head coach Cockerill, it’s a non-stop morning of interviews. First he sits in front of five TV crews – Sky Sports is his first port of call before he completes visual interviews with TV3’s Sinead Kissane. Then it’s radio, before he sits down for a chat in the corner of the room with the written press. While the media day is presented professionally, there is a relaxed air about the whole day.  

Absent, mind, is Geordan Murphy, who is set to captain the Tigers against his native province in Edinburgh on Saturday. Apparently he’s ‘muzzled’, the head coach is keen to shield Leicester’s most famous Leinsterman from any media work this week. The English press are pretty annoyed, though. This was their angle: Murphy out to spoil the Leinster’s hopes of lifting a first Heineken Cup.

However, every other player in the squad is freely available if requested. They arrive in their training gear, and look relaxed, and co-operate brilliantly with the media. Generally they’re keen to complete the season on a high, but in a Kidney-esque sort of way have that enough media savvy to talk up the opposition.

With only four days to the 2009 Heineken Cup, you do get a sense that the Tigers are quietly confident of annexing another European title. Players and management wouldn’t say it of course. But battle-hardened after last Saturday’s Premiership win and articulating their annoyance at under-performing in victory, they could very well be inscribing their name on the trophy for a third time.