Lions tour changed England lock's preconceptions about Irish players

Getting to know the Irish players changed the preconceptions Ollie Chessum had built up in his mind about them.

Thu, 11 Dec, 2025 - 06:15

PJ Browne

Ollie Chessum received a gift from Andrew Porter during the summer. The Ireland prop sent the England and Leicester second row two personalised hurleys from the Dublin-based maker 65 Hurls. They were emblazoned with ‘Bin Chicken’, the nickname which Chessum picked up on the Lions tour of Australia. The hurleys got some use before the weather turned cold. Chessum and Will Stuart sent Porter a cricket bat in return.

Chessum became friendly with many of the Irish players on the tour. He's looking forward to seeing some familiar faces when Leinster pitch up at Welford Road to face Leicester Tigers in the Champions Cup on Friday night.

“I had a message off Tadhg Furlong just the other week, as a catch-up,” said Chessum.

“I really got quite close with the likes of Andrew Porter, Jack Conan and Dan Sheehan, those kind of guys on tour.”

Getting to know the Irish players changed the preconceptions Chessum had built up in his mind about them.

“I'd not come across a lot of the Irish boys before and I got on very well with them,” he said at the launch of the Champions Cup in London.

“Hugo Keenan's here, so it's nice to catch up with him. I'd like to think I'm fairly sociable, so I got to meet everyone and it'll be strange in the next few weeks coming up against them again and then obviously with international stuff, it changes the picture for you slightly.

“It was quite easy to motivate yourself to play against these guys in terms of creating a narrative around what they're like as people to get behind. Whereas now, I've met them face-to-face, I know that's not always the case, so I'll have to find a different way.”

Chessum didn’t want to go into what those narratives were. “But you can imagine where coaches go with it,” he said.

“For me personally, I find it quite easy to motivate myself to play any level of rugby. I think there's an element used by coaches. That kind of changes for me having experienced what those guys are like off the field.

“There's always an element of truth to it as well, because an individual's experiences with someone else can be very different to your own.”

Leicester opened their Champions Cup campaign with a 39-20 defeat away to La Rochelle on Saturday. They at least halved the points conceded on their last pool-stage trip to France, when Toulouse hammered them 80-12. It was a turning point in the Leicester season, one which ended with them reaching the Premiership final which they lost to Bath.

“There’s loads of lessons that you can take from defeats,” said Chessum. “I think people always say you learn the most in those kind of games.

“I think you see, playing against opposition like that, what it takes to be in the mix to win these games. They were ruthless against us. And I think that's how we've got to try and approach these next few games as well.

“I think that game was a turning point for us. It kicked us on into that second half of the season. There's a lot of us in that room that don't ever want to go back to a place like that. I still think about it now.”

Leinster defeated Leicester in the pool stage two years ago, and again in that season’s quarter-finals. Chessum does not believe being part of the Lions tour with 14 Leinster players gives him any particularly valuable insight.

“It'd be nice, wouldn't it, if having played with them for a few games gave you the blueprint on how to beat Leinster or how to beat Ireland, but I don't think that's the case,” he said.

“They're a completely different team at Leinster than they are at Ireland anyway. You learn about them as individuals, as people, but I don't think it changes too much from a tactical perspective.

“It seems like an annual event, us meeting Leinster in a group stage of a European competition.

“You can almost treat that game as a test match, really, in terms of the level of opposition that you're facing.”