Geoff Parling finds home comforts at Leicester despite lack of furniture

Geoff Parling has his first win as Leicester coach. He hasn’t got any furniture in his new home, but he will consider a bonus-point win over Harlequins more important than a chaise longue. All the more so given the outlook for his team early in the second half, 19-0 down in front of their dearest with seemingly not so much as an idea about how to break down the Quins defence. He could have done with a chaise longue at that point.

Having accepted the Leicester job over the summer, Parling contributed to Australia’s win over the Lions in the third Test in August as forwards coach, the role he has fulfilled for the past five years, having moved to Melbourne in 2018 to finish his playing career with the Rebels. Australia is pretty much the only home his young family has known. No sooner was the Lions win bagged than he hauled them over kicking and screaming to a new life in the East Midlands. Their furniture is following on.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” he said of the past couple of months. “But a great whirlwind. The kids have been in Australia eight years. They’re pretty much Australian. They were devastated to leave their friends. I’m not going to lie. Surprisingly enough, they’ve actually settled better than I thought they would.”

Geoff Parling before a match in which his Leicester side battle back from 19-0 down to win. Photograph: Andrew Fosker/Shutterstock

Coaxing a bit of rugby out of a collection of professional players must seem like a breeze in the face of such familial politicking. Alas, last weekend’s opening fixture did not go according to plan, a defeat at Bristol, albeit mitigated by a first try-scoring bonus point.

So a win back at Welford Road was more or less non-negotiable. That it followed with maximum points will come as a relief, possibly even a launching pad, but it would be stretching the narrative to suggest it was swaggering. A yellow card for Jack Walker in the 52nd minute proved the key to unlock Parling’s trunk of ideas. The final half-hour was all Leicester – 10 penalties accrued in that time, to none for Quins. The referee, Hamish Smales, was booed off at half-time by a crowd of nearly 17,000. They certainly were not booing come the end.

The Tigers were relentless in the final 30 minutes, but until that point they had seemed bereft. Quins benefited from Storm Amy at their backs in the first half, knocking over three penalties, the third by Jamie Benson from inside his own half. And when Alex Dombrandt broke from the restart, and Will Porter was sent to the posts from a brilliant counterattack before half-time, Leicester looked in serious trouble, all the more so when Jarrod Evans kicked his third penalty early in the second half, right into Amy’s face.

But that was it from Quins. Over to Leicester. The hammering away became too much for the visitors to endure when reduced to 14. Two tries followed while Walker was off, by Will Wand and Jack van Poortvliet, both the coups de grace after fearful periods of torture for Quins. That brought Leicester back to within a score with 15 to go. Billy Searle’s penalty brought them closer still, before Ollie Hassell-Collins’s try took the lead with a little under 10 remaining, the pick of their tries, the winger sent away by some impressive approach work by the new captain, Ollie Chessum, now a gleaming Lion himself. Wand’s second try at the death, a carbon copy of his first, cantering through an exhausted, wide-open defence, claimed the extra point.

Ollie Chessum rises to win a lineout. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images

The thunder round the old stadium was familiar, but these are strange times at Leicester. On the one hand, lest we forget, they were finalists last season – indeed, only three points shy of yet another title. So far, so normal.

But the last few years have not been stable at Welford Road. Parling is the ninth head coach in nine years, for a start. Even finishing second last year, under the guidance of Michael Cheika, they managed only 11 wins out of 18 in the regular season. Their defeat at home by Bristol, to the tune of 50-plus points, just before Christmas, was a thing of wonder if you like rugby but a festive nightmare if you love Leicester. All was far from perfect then. Since when, Cheika has gone, Julián Montoya, the captain, has gone, the World Cup-winning fly-half Handré Pollard has gone. Ben Youngs and Dan Cole may not have been starters any more, but for two players like that to retire at the same time as well is not far off the tearing out of a club’s very soul.

Parling knows all this. He knows Leicester too, having spent six years there in his prime as a player and won two titles, where he and his wife bought their first home, where, if they could only forget those Aussie mates, his two eldest kids might remember they were born.

Geoff Parling in his playing days, battling through two Saracens in Leicester’s 2010 Premiership final win. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

There is more than a hint of the Steve Borthwicks about him, the England coach being one of those eight recent predecessors – the only one to have secured a title in those turbulent nine years. He has the same soft voice, the same imposing stature, the same studious intensity. You sense he is here for the duration, a young coach with international experience and a train set of his own at last. Stability for the Tigers? Maybe, but let’s give him a chance to arrange his furniture first.