The Season So Far

We are five rounds into the Premiership season and two rounds into the Heineken Cup, and we're on the verge of getting into the autumn internationals, along with the LV Cup. Rugby is well and truly back!

As usual, Leicester has started the season off in haphazard form. That close call against Exeter at Welford Road in the first home match was enough to give me a heart attack! But Cockers seemed to put a rocket in the Tiger's arses at the half, and we managed to make it to 80 minutes in the lead.

Our main struggle has been at number 10. What was the management team thinking, letting Sam Vesty go? Now he's down in Bath, playing a top class game for one of our biggest rivals, while we have had Flood injured and soon to be off to international duty, and his back-up Staunton has been damaged as well. Twelvetrees has been giving it his best, learning as he goes, but he's still a young lad making young lad mistakes.

We have also lost vital experience in our forwards over the summer, with Lewis Moody going to Bath and Ben Kay moving to ESPN. Two new signings, George Skivington and Thomas Waldom, have proved to be excellent ones, and hopefully Jordan Crane will be back from injury very soon. It was excellent news to hear that Castro wants to spend the rest of his playing days with Leicester. Some say it's because he is about to open a second restaurant in the area. I don't mind. If it's what keeps him with us, he can open ten!

Tomorrow I'm off to Welford Road for our second Heineken Cup match. I hope to find a team that has improved its line out after a poor performance in that area last weekend. The Scarlets had a great match last weekend, and we can't afford to screw up our set piece, not to mention giving away the stupid penalties. We've been leaking them like a sieve so far this season!

More to look forward to in the next few weeks: our home match against Bath next weekend and a friendly against Australia in November!







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Who Has the Whitest Legs in Rugby?

You would think that, with the sun finally starting to shine after a long hard winter, pasty complexions would start to darken, but it is still early days.

At yesterday's Leicester v Harlequins match, my friend Rachel and I were trying to decide who has the whitest legs in the Leicester starting 15. Johne Murphy was up there. So was Lewis Moody.

But the big winner was my favourite Tiger and club captain Geordan Murphy!




So who are your candidates for rugby's whitest legs? Send your pics to me via my Twitter - @TigersChickMel - or email them to me at melinda.rice@ymail.com, and I will post the best of them here.

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Twitter Addiction Strikes Again

Twitter is almost too easy sometimes.

When I got started, I tweeted everything under one account. Since I didn't use it much, it worked out just fine. But eventually my rugby addiction caught up with me, and @melindarice developed multiple personalities. Every day tweets relating to writing, the kids, work, chavs, etc stayed with @melindarice, and the sporty personality broke off to create @tigerschickmel. There I could tweet rugby and F1 as much as I wanted for those who were only interested in my rugby and F1 thoughts.

But soon that caused problems too. I love following Leicester Tigers official tweeter/twitterer, but I also love tweeting what I see, think and feel when I'm on the Crumbie Terrace as well. As you may know from my last blog post, this got me into a spot of bother at our last home match. For once my 3G signal didn't disappear and it wasn't too cold to leave my gloves off, so I had a blast giving my unofficial commentary. I was accused of being biased.

Multiple personality number three has emerged: @tigersrugby. This will be an account dedicated purely to this biased verbal outpouring from matches or from my living room or local pub while watching matches on the telly. I will say upfront that I am a Tigers supporter and will tweet as such. But those of you who aren't interested but who still kinda like the other rubbish I come out with can have the 20 or 30 glowing matchday tweets filtered out.

I even have three followers. Okay, two followers. I'm sad enough to have started the ball rolling by following myself.

-- Post From My iPhone

Passionate About Rugby and Proud

I love the world of Twitter. Through it I have come into contact with some fabulous characters from fellow Leicester supporters to newcoming neutrals to professional players. It's an incredible way of sharing a sport I love.

I first realised the value of Twitter in 2009 when David and I were on holiday in Majorca during the Heinekken Cup semi-finals. We managed to find a pub showing the Leinster match, but when it was time for the Cardiff v Leicester match, we were kicked out for a switchover to some obscure football match that actually emptied the pub.

All we could do was follow updates on the Internet back at our hotel. David checked the BBC live scores, and I followed on Twitter. I generally knew what happened before David did thanks to my fellow "Twits". It wasn't ideal but it was still very exciting. Not to mention it was probably warmer by the side of the pool in Alcudia than it was in Cardiff.

I tend to tweet a lot from the matches I attend, and my intention is to, first of all, share what's happening with anyone who is interested and, second, share my passion for my club.

Today I had the surreal experience of being told I am biased in my amateur commentating.

I make no apologies. I am a Leicester supporter and of course I'm biased! I could be no other way, and I have yet to find another supporter of any club who tweets without bias. And that's the thing I love about Twitter. I would never trade the banter that generates for all the Leicester fans on the Internet. All I can say is that there is an option to unfollow me if my tweets are biased and boring. The joy of Twitter is to put my opinion out there, and I will always respect the opinions of others even if I disagree with them.


-- Post From My iPhone

One Gutted Tigers Supporter

Lewis Moody is moving to Bath. Lote Tuqiri is heading back to Australia. It is the saddest week in my rugby life since Martin Corry announced his retirement.

I have a soft spot for Moody. Almost a year ago I met him at his testimonial event Beers With the England (and Ireland) Boys, and until then I admired and respected the guy, but I came away really liking him as a person.



Moody is a really funny guy. As part of his testimonial duties he told a few tales, including the story of being red carded for a punch on his Leicester team mate Alesana Tuilagi when they faced each other at in an international match at Twickenham in 2005, the first time an Englishman had ever been red carded at HQ. Tuilagi is also a funny guy as he commented, with as much of an innocent look as he could manage, that he never felt Mad Dog Moody's punch.

One of the charity auction items up for grabs at the event was a weeks' stay in his villa in Spain. While it was actually being auctioned, David disappeared for a few minutes and then reappeared chuckling.

He had been to the gents' toilet at the same time as Moody, and he commented, allegedly as they were both having a pee, "That's your villa they're auctioning out there, Lewis".

"Oh," he replied. "I guess I better get the f*cking thing built then".

I saw the lady who won the auction. She wouldn't have appreciated the joke. I'm surprised she could go outside in the sunlight and even therefore consider a trip to Spain.

Most of the people at the event didn't seem to have any real interest in rugby or the Leicester Tigers, which probably explains why, on hearing I was a season ticket holder, a couple of the players stopped looking like they were just going through the motions of the autograph-pose for photo-chit chat routine and were happy to have genuine conversations. Moody was one of them.

As it was coming up to the end of the Premiership season, David and I asked him how he fancied our chances of making it to the final. He told us to book our tickets. We did, and we not only made it to the final, we won. I'm sure Moody's confidence was shared by the team which is why Leicester was so successful.

But my favourite part of the conversation was when Moody shook David's hand and then bent down (quite a distance really since I'm only 5' 4") and gave me a kiss on the cheek. That was it. I was smitten.

And now he's leaving us for Bath. I suppose it could have been worse. He could have signed for Wasps.

The second blow of the week was having to bid a fond farewell to Lote Tuqiri.

To be honest, before he signed to play for Leicester I never heard of Tuqiri. What can I say? I am still very ignorant in rugby terms. But David assured me that it was a big deal, and I knew he was telling the truth when Tuqiri came off the bench in our match against South Africa in November. Our incredible match where the Leicester scrum dominated that of the World Champions ...

But back to the point, as soon as Tuqiri's name was announced and he ran onto the pitch, you could feel the electricity go through the crowd. He was, indeed, a special signing.



I was there, on the Crumbie Terrace at Welford Road when, right in front of me, Tuqiri scored his first try for the Tigers. And then in the same match when he scored his second. That was an incredible day.

Unfortunately I never had the pleasure of personally meeting Tuqiri, but after a few exchanges on Twitter regarding rugby and Wellies, I think that he, too, is a really nice guy. He will be sadly missed, and I wish him the very best in the next stage of his career Down Under. I hope he won't need those Wellies so much.


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Italy: My Second Favourite Team

Last Sunday marked the third time I have had the pleasure of watching Italy play live in the Six Nations and my first visit to the Stadio Flaminio. I have had a soft spot for the Italian side ever since Scotland v Italy on 24 February 2007.

That was my first ever rugby match.

My partner David had followed the game for 40 years after playing first at school, then for Doncaster and Yorkshire, eventually retiring while in Linlithgow not long before I met him. But like many sportsmen, just because the body proved unable to carry on, his heart and soul were still in the game.

His passion for the game was infectious, and I couldn't have had a better teacher to educate me on the laws and history of rugby. And that doesn't take into account some of his stories from his playing days, many of which I can't repeat on here because my parents and children might one day read this blog!

In February 2007, he invited me to join him on a trip to Edinburgh (at that point I had never set foot in Scotland despite having lived in the UK for over nine years) to watch Scotland v Italy at Murrayfield. I accepted with no hesitation.

In his pre-match explanation, David advised me to expect Scotland to win by a good 20 or 30 points. In the first eight minutes, Italy scored three tries right in front of me. The Italian supporters went nuts, and Scotland went on to lose by a final score of 17 to 37.

Three years and countless international and club matches later, we headed to Rome for the Six Nations match between England and Italy.

For months David had been telling friends and family that he was taking me to Rome for Valentines Day, and while this was true, those who know David best would ask, "Is there a rugby match involved?". When we confirmed this was the case, I inevitably received sympathetic comments.

But how could they feel sorry for me when this was the sight that greeted me upon reaching my seat?







The atmosphere in the stadium was incredible. It might be run down, past its prime and due to be replaced, but the Stadio Flaminio feels like an old friend even on the first visit.

The number of England supporters attending was incredible! When I hear people comment from now on about they think Italy shouldn't be part of the Six Nations, I will dare them to moot that point with the thousands of rugby supporters who love making the trip to Rome!

There were England shirts all over Rome in the run-up to the match, and they congregated in the stadium along with a huge number of Italians. I was a bit different, I have to say. I wore my England shirt the day before when we spent the afternoon in an Irish pub watching the other two Six Nations matches, and for Italy v England I went proudly wearing my (much warmer) Leicester shirt.

Ok so the match itself wasn't the most thrilling I've ever been to, although the unexpectedly close score was nerve wracking. Italy could have pulled off an upset with Wilkinson having an off day - and I might add that all players have them for whatever reason but that doesn't mean he needs to be replaced permanently - which meant England missed out on additional points on the board.

But my favourite memory of the day will be something that happened off the pitch.

The friend who booked our match tickets also surprised us with pre and post match hospitality, so instead of heading with the crowds back into the centre of Rome, we stayed behind for champagne and nibbles. It was probably an hour after the end of the match before we set off back towards our hotel.

We could hear people cheering in Italian ahead of us but didn't know the cause at first. Then, standing outside an open gate near the changing room was a small crowd of about 20 people taking photos.

I grabbed David's arm. "Is that Castro?" I asked him.

He says now that I never waited for his answer before I dashed into the crowd, elbowing small children out of my way in an effort to get to one of my favourite players, Italy and Leicester star Martin Castrogiovanni. I dispute David's version of events, as I definitely heard him confirm that it was indeed Castro, and I easily got to him as the crowd around him was not very big. But I won't let the truth get in the way of David's story.

I was afraid I was too late because he turned to go back into the stadium, but I tapped him on the shoulder and asked if there was any chance of a hug for a Leicester supporter, showing him the badge on the raincoat I was wearing.

At first he looked very puzzled, I suppose because he wasn't expecting to see his club colours in Rome, but then he gave me a big bear of a hug! David said Castro's face lit up, but I didn't believe him until I saw the photo later.







Fortunately he had had a shower following his very intense match (even getting a yellow card for his "enthusiasm") and smelled really good!

My first trip to Rome and my first visit to the Stadio Flaminio were both memories I will always cherish. Hopefully two years from now I can add to them, but for now I need to work on getting to Dublin for the 2011 Six Nations. It won't be my Italians out there playing but that won't stop me from going for travel and a rugby match!

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