How a butchery course sharpened Tigers' Prem appetite

A look inside Joe Heyes' chest freezer reveals a little about how Leicester Tigers have established themselves as Prem contenders this season.

Freshly butchered legs of meat might suggest the 27-year-old England international is a prop with a big appetite, but that is not all.

After Sunday's 47-33 win at Sale Sharks, Heyes spoke about how carving a few prime cuts of meat with team-mates helped bring out the best in a ravenous Tigers outfit that a week earlier put England's top-flight on notice by thumping leaders Northampton.

"It's not like an amazing secret recipe, but the lads are hanging out more with each other off the pitch than I've ever seen in any other team since I've been here," Heyes told BBC Radio Leicester.

"The lads are going to golf and on Thursday we did a wild butchery course provided by the RPA [Rugby Players' Association], and we were butchering fallow deer and rabbits."

But how can carving meat make a rugby team any better at carving up opposition defences?

"It's just that connectivity that you don't massively get when you come into the club and you go home. Lads are connecting well off the pitch so you're getting to know each other a lot better," he said.

"Then when we are together we're training really hard, we're really going at each other on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and it's good - it's positive competition and we're all friends off it."

The rewards for that unity is securing a play-off place with two games remaining, which gives them a chance of now trying to go on to secure a home semi-final.

They next host fourth-placed Exeter on 31 May before finishing the regular season at champions Bath, currently a point ahead of Tigers in second place.

The by-products of last week's hard work, it turns out, are as filling as they were fulfilling.

"I've got eight legs in the freezer now – it's a big chest freezer full of legs," Heyes said.

"There's a couple of lads who've got the background of farming and all those kind of things, but for me it was a very new experience. It was cool, I've got a bit of a weak stomach, but it was different - very different."

Listen to Heyes' full interview on the Tigers Rugby Show on BBC Radio Leicester on Wednesday and again on BBC Sounds.