Leicester Tigers head coach Geoff Parling booted TNT Sports and Craig Doyle off the pitch before the Slater Cup match against Gloucester at Villa Park.
TNT Sports host Doyle had challenged Liam MacDevitt, a former footballer and member of the TNT Sports production team, to kick towards the posts during the warm-ups at Villa Park when Parling marched across.
“That’s not on. That’s f---ing not on. Get off the pitch,” Parling said to Doyle before pushing the Irish presenter. Doyle backed away and apologised to viewers for the language. “Geoff’s not happy about that,” he said.
MacDevitt had been challenged to successfully kick a conversion from the tee as part of an “initiation” into the TNT Sports team. “Usually it's a song or you've got to down something disgusting,” Doyle said. “You're going to kick this ball.”
MacDevitt kicked wide of the posts, with the ball landing near to where the Leicester players were warming up. When Parling walked over to the pair, Doyle asked the Leicester boss: “Would you sign him Geoff?”
But the former England international was not amused, with Doyle also saying Parling was “understandably upset” as they were marched off the pitch.
TNT later apologised to the Leicester head coach as the stunt had not been cleared with Tigers beforehand.
“The producer from TNT has just come and apologised to me,” Parling explained, having felt his players were at risk. “They had something set up that wasn’t passed on to anybody and without our knowledge.
“I am very wary and I need to protect my players. Where there’s an injury risk I’m obviously not going to be happy. It just has to be agreed with the team. It is simple communication. They just kind of apologised and said they didn’t communicate anything on what the plan was and obviously there’s an injury risk when a ball flies into a group of players that are warming up, prepped to focus in the way they started that game. I want to see the game differently. I do. Let’s speak about it and get everything agreed first.”
The incident took place before Leicester convincingly beat Gloucester 36-17 to retain the Slater Cup, with the fixture named in honour of former Gloucester and Leicester lock Ed Slater following his diagnosis with motor neurone disease in 2022.
