Leicester have revealed for the first time their frustration at the way England ripped the heart out of their coaching team.
The most turbulent season in the history of club rugby has claimed the Premiership scalps of Worcester and Wasps and could yet add a third in London Irish.
Tigers survived and even reached the play-offs but say it is no thanks to the Rugby Football Union who, between December and May, swooped for no fewer than five of their senior coaches.
Until now Leicester have kept their own counsel, wishing Steve Borthwick and Kevin Sinfield well, repeating the sentiment for Richard Wigglesworth and Aled Walters and doing so again for scrum coach Tom Harrison.
But with their season over they want it known they were less than impressed with how events unfolded - and that England’s gain caused them a good deal of pain.
Andrea Pinchen, Tigers’ chief executive, said: “You lose your head coach and your defence coach halfway through what is a disjointed season anyway. Undoubtedly, it’s going to impact you.
“When you go into a club and take pretty much the entirety of its coaching team and IP (intellectual property), it impacts your ability to trade, it impacts you financially, your sponsors.
“For your home nation to be doing that to one of its clubs is hard to swallow. We’ve needed the emotional and financial support of everybody in and around Leicester Tigers to get through this. Without that we could have had real problems.”
Pinchen claims Leicester were so supportive of Borthwick’s England ambitions that last summer they actually contacted the RFU to propose a timetable to him succeeding Eddie Jones.
“I was mindful we needed to start our succession planning, working backwards from post-World Cup,” she said. “They seemed to agree. It was all very amicable, at that stage”.
Then came England’s awful autumn and on December 6 Jones was sacked. RFU boss Bill Sweeney called Pinchen who gave him permission to approach Borthwick.
“The negotiations went backwards and forwards with Bill and myself,” she said. “It's fair to say at times it got a little heated on both sides.
“All the way through what I was trying to do was make sure Leicester weren't losing out financially because somebody else's plans hadn't worked out for them.”
She had seen two clubs “go pop”, leaving Leicester without a home game for seven weeks and blowing a £700,000 hole in their revenue stream. She was not about to just roll over - but was taken aback by what she encountered.
“There were a lot of unnecessary conversations around ‘there's no way we'll get to the money that you want’,” she said. “And even ‘You'll have to tell Steve you've stood in his way’.
“When you negotiate with somebody it's purely business. Trying to play people off, pull people’s strings and use emotional connotations.. I don't see why you would do that. I don’t see the need.”
