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Levani Botia turns down Leicester Tigers
By Ian Cameron
Blockbusting Fijian hybrid player Levani Botia has turned down advances from Leicester Tigers and will stay on at Ronan O'Gara's La Rochelle - it was confirmed this week.
The Fijian skipper had been heavily linked with a move to Steve Borthwick's Premiership league leaders but has instead been convinced to stay put at Les Corsaires.
It was confirmed this week that Botia has signed on for another two seasons at the club which he joined in 2014.
Botia is a rare breed of player who can play both in the back row and in the centres, where his explosive ball carrying appears to be equally effective.
The 32-year-old has more recently been deployed by O'Gara as a back row. O'Gara told Le Equipe this week: "It's just added value for our back row which, since the start of the season, has taken a small hit in with the career stoppage of Kévin Gourdon and the lack of availability of Wiaan Liebenberg and Victor Vito."
Botia (6ft, 103kg) is nicknamed 'The Demolition' man and has been a mainstay of the French side throughout their climb through the French ranks. He has played 141 matches in Yellow and Black, becoming a cult hero at Marcel Deflandre.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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