London Irish prop Lovejoy Chawatama is prepared for the arrival of Leicester Tigers this Saturday night, and expects them to bring “Test Match intensity” to the G-tech Community Stadium. London Irish have recently found a hot run of form, winning their last three matches and in turn qualifying for the Premiership Rugby Cup Final.
Chawatama expects a big-fight feel when Leicester travel down to Brentford, and is confident that the Exiles will step-up and match the Tigers. A strong performance on the road against Bath last weekend, saw Irish come away with a 25-10 victory at the Rec. The tighthead prop expects his side to carry this momentum forward, and successfully defend their home soil this weekend.
“We we know that Leicester are going to take this to another level. They’re the champions, they’re coming to our home, and anyone coming to our home, we know we’re playing in front of our fans and our families.
“It’s another level, they’re going to bring test match intensity. And we have to match that and go above and beyond. And we just have to improve, like a lot of things that we did on the weekend. We did some fantastic things, but it’s stuff that the coachers have pinpointed that we need to work on in order to get a good result against Leicester on a weekend.”
With the 2023 Guinness Six Nations ongoing, there will be notable absentees from both squads away on international duty. Leicester Tigers’ prop Dan Cole is currently away training with the England squad, and won’t be lining up opposite Chawatama in the scrum on Saturday. The London Irish tighthead discussed how he is instead focussing on himself.
“Every week, every prop who plays in the Premiership are very good players, you know, so anytime you play games on any prop you go and play against, it’s always going to be a challenge. They’re there for a reason, because they’re all good players. So there’s no advantage when we say Dan Cole is not there, you play what’s in front of you. Yeah, so that’s what we just concentrate on and we’re just concentrating on ourselves.”
The Exiles have been working tirelessly in training, and have started seeing their successes on the pitch. After a slow start to the season London Irish are riding a wave of success into the match against Leicester. Chawatama praised the Exiles’ and is hopeful of this success to continue.
“Yeah, the beginning of the season obviously we were getting those narrow losses, and we never… we felt a bit down. We still kept trying to play, and keep to the plan that the coaches wanted us (to). Our defence has got so much better, we’re not letting teams in easily. And working hard on that, goal line defence has been fantastic and not letting teams… not giving teams easy ins into our 22.
“We were giving so many penalties (away) between the half way line and the 10m line. And if you do that in the Premiership, where everyone has got fantastic quality, you spend a lot of time defending. So just getting rid of those penalties in the middle part of the pitch I think helps, which allows us to then play that expansive style of rugby that we want to play and our fans are used to seeing.
“And just getting stuck together, and just never giving up. We’ve been working hard every week, from preseason. This is something that’s been planned from preseason. It’s something that’s been worked on through the season, that we just keep going, and yeah I’m glad the results are coming our way at the moment and long may it continue.”