Steve Borthwick hits out at Wasps after Leicester victory

Leicester Tigers head coach Steve Borthwick has hit out at Wasps for their conduct on the pitch during his side’s 27-8 victory over the latter at Welford Road on Saturday.

Borthwick’s criticism was levelled particularly at Wasps players 'shouting for a red card'.

It was a game in which three red cards were issued which saw Tigers finish up with 13 men and Wasps 14. Hanro Liebenberg and Jasper Wiese were given their marching orders for Leicester while tighthead prop Kieran Brookes was dismissed in the Wasps colours.

"I think that the protocols are in place, the referees are following them. Player welfare is paramount,” Borthwick said.

"I think one thing I'd be conscious of is that I don't want us to be in a situation where you have people jumping up and down, shouting, up in arms. That is not the way I'd conduct myself, I coach the team not to conduct themselves like that.

"That's the danger and you saw hints of it today. When I looked across I saw, when that incident happened and I'm hearing people shouting for a red card that's not what should be happening in our game and I hope that's dealt with very, very clearly, that we don't conduct ourselves like that.

"The incident's happened, what we've got to do is get on with trying to find a way to win the game and I credit the players with, after Jasper's red card the players got on with trying to find a way to win the game."

Tigers put in an admirable shift which earned them a great result, especially considering their numerical issues.

"I think the players' maturity on the pitch was outstanding," said Borthwick. "At halftime, it was very simple. I asked the players 'what do we need to do in this second half? We're playing with 14 men against 15 what do we need to do?'

"And they came up with three main points and presented them to the team and the players came out and got on with that and obviously things changed slightly again in that second half and the players came out and got on with it.

"I think we took a step forward today. We know that we've got a lot of ground to make up from where we've been but the players' attitudes, taking lessons from games, what we could do better, going and putting them on the training park, working exceptionally hard to try and improve, the attitude of players to do that has been fantastic.

"Some things today went well, that we were pleased about, there's obviously areas that we need to do better that we'll take away and look at how we can improve them."