But it is the arrival of the Tongan-born Vunipola, whose younger brother Billy has starred for Montpellier in the Top 14 this season, which will attract most attention. Over a feted 13-year stint with Saracens, Vunipola won four Prem titles and three European Cups in the club\u2019s golden era.<\/p>\n
On the Test stage, Vunipola was selected for three British and Irish Lions tours, earning nine caps \u2013 winning one series and drawing another \u2013 in the process. In an England jersey, he won a Grand Slam in 2016 and also started at loosehead for both the 2019 World Cup semi-final, beating New Zealand on one of his country\u2019s greatest days, as well as the final defeat by South Africa.<\/p>\n
Whether Vunipola still harbours international ambitions with England remains to be seen. In January, Vunipola admitted to Rugby World that it would be \u201can honour\u201d to represent Tonga at the next World Cup, even if he stopped short of committing to the task. Last year, he also revealed to RugbyPass that he had spoken to Tonga about potentially coaching as an assistant to Tevita Tu\u2019ifua at next year\u2019s global showpiece.<\/p>\n
Vunipola spoke of his desire to \u201ctransition into coaching\u201d which, given the age profile of Leicester\u2019s remaining two looseheads \u2013 Haffar is 24 and Van der Flier is 23 \u2013 may well begin at Leicester\u2019s Oval Park training base.<\/p>\n
For England, loosehead prop is not a position of great depth for head coach Steve Borthwick, who has regulars Fin Baxter (injured) and Ellis Genge. Bevan Rodd is the incumbent second choice behind Genge while Emmanuel Iyogun is yet to feature in this year\u2019s Six Nations. Should Vunipola grasp the nettle with Leicester, then Borthwick could do a lot worse than the former Saracen in the hunt for a third-choice loosehead.<\/p>\n
In the inaugural season of new head coach Geoff Parling, who played for both England and the Lions with Vunipola, Leicester are well placed in the Prem table, sitting fourth and welcoming third-placed Bristol to Welford Road a week on Sunday when English domestic rugby returns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But it is the arrival of the Tongan-born Vunipola, whose younger brother Billy has starred for Montpellier in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4102],"tags":[18194,29982,20795,236793,4151,5342,236795,93,79,1715,236794,16,15],"class_list":["post-823126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-england-rugby-union-team","tag-gallagher-premiership","tag-leicester-tigers","tag-mako-vunipola","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-union","tag-saracens-rugby","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-tonga-rugby-union-team","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823126","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=823126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}