'I haven't looked at the league table': Borthwick after Leicester's undefeated start

Leicester Tigers have enjoyed their best start to the season in more than 20 years after beating London Irish – but head coach Steve Borthwick is adamant the club will not be getting ahead of themselves.

Tries from 21-year-old hooker Nic Dolly – his fourth of the season – and Hanro Liebenberg, plus 11 points from the boot of George Ford, were enough for Tigers to edge London Irish 21-16 and win their opening four games of a league campaign for the first time since 2000.

They go back to the top of the Gallagher Premiership table but Borthwick is refusing to get carried away by his side’s historic achievement.

“I was just told that stat about our start to the season,” said Borthwick. “What do I do? My head is on playing Worcester next Saturday. I don’t look back very far and I don’t look forward very far, I keep it really simple.

“I haven’t looked at the league table, and I honestly don’t know when I’ll look at it. We’ve just got to keep trying to get better – we’ll try to get our house in order as best we can.”

Agustin Creevy went over on 55 minutes to give the Exiles a 16-12 lead at the Brentford Community Stadium but Leicester dug deep and three Ford penalties in the final 18 minutes saw them home.

“London Irish are a good team, really well-coached and tactically they were excellent,” added Borthwick.

“That game could have gone either way at the end – it was a tight game and it could easily have been a loss.

“The fact is the players showed immense character and immense fight. If it had been a loss, I still would have been very proud of them for what they did. A win or a loss, we’ll look at what we need to do better, go away and try to do it.”

London Irish are still searching for their first Gallagher Premiership victory of the campaign and now have a winless league run of ten games stretching back to last season, with head coach Les Kiss admitting the squad need picking up.

“It’s a very despondent dressing room, we don’t like feeling like we feel at the moment, that’s for sure,” he explained.

“However, we’ve got to find some gems in it and we will. We know we will find those gems.

“We know we’re in a pretty good place, this team is committed to what we know is just round the corner but we’ve just got to stay hard, disciplined and focus on what we’re good at.

“This season, for sure, it’s the most despondent we’ve been. This was in front of 8,000 or 9,000 fans – the best crowd for a while and they were right behind us.

“That makes it equally a sad dressing room but these boys are resilient. They work hard and we’ve just got to trust that what we’re about is the right direction, and it is. We will come out of it.”