All hands on deck for Tigers

13 April 2012

As a humble member of the Leicestershire Constabulary, John Wells never imagined that one day he would be paid to sail down the Seine in the line of duty.

Leicester are pushing the boat out in Paris tomorrow night like never before for everyone at the club, splashing some £60,000 on a party which will either be a celebration or a wake depending on the Tigers' fate at the Parc des Princes against the locals from literally across the road, Stade Francais.

Being the very antithesis of a champagne charlie, Wells will not have given it a thought.

Besides, Leicester's low-profile coach is far too busy plotting and planning at the team's base in Versailles - aiming to ensure that the English champions avoid a repeat of their first Heineken final in Cardiff four years ago, when Brive gave Bob Dwyer's cocksure Tigers the run-around of their lives.

PC1175, then nearing the end of his marathon 367-match stint on the blind- side of the back row, went straight from the late shift at Kegworth blissfully unaware that he was about to run smack into a destroyer-class No.8 launched from the shipyards of Gdansk. Georg Kacala made a career out of letting opponents know that he had put the solid into Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc.

Wells recalled: 'My memories are of having to tackle Kacala in the first few seconds, for the second time after 30 seconds and again 30 seconds after that. If it wasn't him, it was another of their hard forwards. They played with such immense pace and fluidity that the score (28-9) was not a fair reflection of how much we had been outplayed.

'I went into that game never having seen Brive play. I never had access to any tapes. We have tried to use those experiences leading up to the last final in our preparation for this one. As a result of providing much more information about Stade Francais, I hope our players will be better prepared.'

There will be no live television link-up to the team room tonight as there was four years ago, no pre-match stroll around the boulevards and most definitely no photographs anywhere near the trophy itself. The collective superstition explained why Martin Johnson refused to sit down for his last Press conference until the offending trophy had been removed from his right elbow.

Wells, a down-to-earth, no-frills Yorkshireman from the market town of Driffield, has long learned to take nothing for granted, which explains why he keeps his old job open despite never failing to win at least the Premiership in each of his three seasons as coach.

Far from resigning from the police when Leicester rewarded him with a second two-year contract last season, Wells opted instead to extend his sabbatical from the force until June 2003. His lifelong pal and back-row sparring partner, Dean Richards, did the same initially before formally ending his police career.

A family man with three young children, Wells will not be following suit, at least not yet, despite his promotion to England's coaching coterie on the North American tour in place of the Lions-bound Andy Robinson. 'I'm being very pragmatic about it,' he said. 'You can lose half a dozen games in this business and find yourself out of a job.

'During the members' dinner at the club last year, someone congratulated me on the second championship and said it would be asking too much to win it again. He thought we would finish third or fourth. I said: ''If that's the case, I'll be out of a jobî.

'That may have been slightly tongue-in- cheek but you never know what is going to happen. Frank Endacott (sacked by Wigan earlier in the week) is the latest example. The Leicestershire Constabulary have been extremely supportive in the way they have looked after me.'

Their support would not have extended to a Saturday night cruise down the Seine - something Wells will tackle with less than full relish unless his Tigers have emulated Liverpool and turned their domestic double into a European treble.

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