Leicester head coach Richard Cockerill is confident Toby Flood will be fit for England's Calcutta Cup clash with Scotland.
Leicester fly-half's substitution only a precautionary measure
Leicester Tigers head coach Richard Cockerill is confident Toby Flood will be fit for England's Calcutta Cup clash with Scotland on March 13.
Stand-off Flood left the field just after half-time in the Tigers' 35-19 Guinness Premiership victory over London Irish, but Cockerill insists the move was just a precaution after the player suffered a bang to the head.
"He was a little dazed but nothing serious. He had it early in the game and we looked at him at half-time, he was a bit hazy in his vision so we decided to bring him off early in the second half," Cockerill said.
"He will be fine (for Murrayfield). It was a physical game in lots of ways, it's a precaution and we are looking after him."
Leicester's win over the Exiles strengthened their position at the top of the Guinness Premiership table and left Cockerill delighted.
Fantastic
"The performance in the first half was fantastic," he said. "The second half was a bit scrappy and a bit disjointed but obviously losing Toby didn't help that.
"But I am delighted with the performance, we scored four tries against a good side so you can't ask for anything more than that.
"The players had a tough week on the training field after last week (a 19-3 defeat at Northampton) and mentally it's been hard for everyone. It was good to bounce back and five points was just what we needed."
Australian Lote Tuqiri made his last appearance for Leicester before returning home to play for Wests Tigers in the NRL.
Playing at centre, the former Wallaby was heavily involved in setting up Scott Hamilton for one of Leicester's four tries and Cockerill revealed he had been close to retaining the dual-code star.
"He's been great for the club and we would have liked to keep him. We were very close to keeping him because he liked it so much," he said.
Mountain
London Irish boss Toby Booth applauded his side's second-half effort, but felt they had left themselves with too much to do after their disastrous opening, which he described as a "25-minute suicide".
"We gave ourselves a mountain to climb and we probably gambled a bit in our 22 for their fourth try which we probably didn't need to do," he said.
"That was the killer blow in relation to losing bonus points but we have a couple of weeks off now and I said at half-time, amongst other things, we needed positives to take away with us because when we pick the reins up in seven days we need to have things to build on for the final furlong.
"And I think we saw that in the second half, there was something to build on, on what was a very difficult afternoon."
