OLLIE HASSELL-COLLINS

The winger is loving life at the revamped Tigers - and backing them to land another PREM title

- Words NEIL SQUIRES >> Pics GETTY IMAGES

YOU HAVE to wonder what some of those gnarled Tigers of old would have made of Ollie Hassell-Collins.

When he lined up against the All Blacks' second string for England A last month, the Leicester wing did so with pink and black painted nails. He had the blond hair dye out long before Henry Pollock discovered it, loves his jewellery and has a tattoo collection which includes one of a Golden Snitch - the match ball in Quidditch.

The Harry Potter fixation extends to two of his four cats: Albus, Severus, Betsy and Marmalade, whom he has been known to take for a walk on a lead. Although it doesn't happen so much these days as he leaves them to use their cat flap, he isn't ruling out more moggie rambles in future.

“I went to a garden centre recently and saw someone else walking their cat and I thought, 'I've got to get back into it...”

So Hassell-Collins is definitively his own man, a London Irish original. Yet, now in his third season at Welford Road, he has become an integral part of the Tigers' dressing room.