Freddie Burns matures from maverick to Tiger

In the eternal battle between the schools of substance and style, there is only ever one side to which Leicester subscribe, which, as Freddie Burns has discovered in his first season at Welford Road, does not contain bells and whistles.

Bath, their semi-final opponents today, have scored nearly twice as many ties in the Premiership, but as Burns points out, Richard Cockerill’s much-maligned and dismissed Leicester side have won only one less game than a Bath team crammed full of award winners.

“We’ve been rubbish all year, apparently, and we’re third, we’ve only won one game less than N…