![\"Leicester](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/\/f0fbdc88-c93c-4f80-94f8-76c5cc724ff2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Van Poortvliet celebrates with fellow scrum halves Youngs, left, and Wigglesworth, right, after Twickenham success in 2022 but says that, for him, the victory felt hollow<\/p>\n
DAVID ROGERS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
Van Poortvliet has felt this lingering bitterness about 2022 as he had the rug pulled from underneath him by Steve Borthwick, who was the Leicester head coach at the time. <\/p>\n
During his second full season with the senior side, Van Poortvliet played 19 league games, most from the substitutes\u2019 bench, including the play-off semi-final, but then on the Monday morning after Leicester had beaten Northampton Saints to reach the final, Borthwick called him in for a fateful chat.<\/p>\n
He had decided that for the Twickenham final 39-year-old Richard Wigglesworth would start, with Ben Youngs the closer off the bench, as Tigers doubled down on a kick-heavy strategy. <\/p>\n
Leicester won the game 15-12 thanks to a Freddie Burns drop-goal, with a young bunch of recent academy graduates such as Freddie Steward and Ollie Chessum in the team and George Martin on the bench \u2014 but their colleague Van Poortvliet did not feel part of the triumph.<\/p>\n
This week, Van Poortvliet watched the interview Cole Palmer conducted from England\u2019s football camp, saying he does not feel a true Champions League winner having played only in the group stage with Manchester City in 2023, and it resonated.<\/p>\n
![\"Manchester](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/\/273e0b3d-42f1-4f5a-8b3b-7565aa1f44ce.jpg\")
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Palmer and his parents with the Champions League trophy in 2023<\/p>\n
GETTY<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw something from Cole Palmer where he said he felt like he didn\u2019t win the European Cup with Man City because he was involved but didn\u2019t play any minutes in the final,\u201d Van Poortvliet said. \u201cIt felt a little bit like that and for me it has been a bit of a star [an asterisk] on myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played in the semi-final off the bench, came on quite early. I found out [I wasn\u2019t in the final squad] on Monday morning. It was something that was quite hard to manage, at 21. It is something that has been in my memory for a long time and I am just glad I have got the opportunity to be involved in the final.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, how many Premierships do you win or will you win? I don\u2019t want to sound ungrateful because I absolutely loved winning a Premiership and being involved with that but I am really hungry and determined to try and get a win on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
The final this weekend represents Van Poortvliet\u2019s chance to win the Premiership properly, then. He explained how Michael Cheika, the head coach, has bonded the group tightly through sharing players\u2019 family trees, so they can build connections and discover more about each other so that they fight as a team on the field. <\/p>\n
Premiership semi-final reports<\/p>\n
Cheika, who will return to Australia after only one season at Welford Road, also had a one-on-one conversation with Van Poortvliet on Friday before the semi-final, trying to ease him into a \u201cflow state\u201d for the game. Van Poortvliet believes Cheika has been central to Tigers\u2019 turnaround, having finished eighth last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was brilliant in helping me concentrate my mind on what I should focus on and try not to do too much,\u201d Van Poortvliet explained. \u201cGetting into that flow state really, when you don\u2019t have to think, you are just doing the right things basics-wise. It helped a lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a bit of a rollercoaster season results-wise but one thing about Cheik is his ability to get the best out of everyone, and getting them in the right emotional state. For me, he has been outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bath v Leicester Tigers<\/p>\n
Gallagher Premiership final
Twickenham
Saturday, 3pm
TV<\/b> ITV1\/TNT Sports 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack van Poortvliet won the Gallagher Premiership title three years ago with Leicester Tigers aged 21, but that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-168836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114650414052084565","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}