In part one of our exclusive George Chuter interview, the Leicester Tigers hooker tells us about the club’s future, plans for retirement and his famous programme column…

Since joining Tigers in 2000, George Chuter has gone from strength to strength, claiming Guinness Premiership titles, playing in two Heineken Cup finals and establishing himself as one of the best hookers in the English game.

The former Saracens man has also earned 22 caps for England and played in the 2007 World Cup final defeat to South Africa.

One of the game’s more intriguing characters, due to his love of Elvis Presley, penchant for beard-growing and amusing matchday programme column, Chuter met with Soar Magazine to share his views on what’s left in the tank, his life away from the game and the future for Tigers and England.

With only five Premiership games left before the play-offs, George is looking for the team to finish top of the pile and build up some end of season momentum.

“You need to obviously finish in the top four to qualify for the play-offs and the top two gives you a home semi-final. Our goal is to finish top, but the top two is where we’re really aiming.”

Tigers’ last Guinness Premiership contest was a 35-19 victory over London Irish at Welford Road at the beginning of the month, a game which saw Chuter end a 95 game drought since his last try for the club. George was delighted to get off the mark again and viewed his score as more surprising than Martin Castrogiovanni intercepting the ball 30 metres out and crossing the line.

“The more important thing was the bonus point after the way we started the game. We’d gone for 50 odd minutes without scoring that fourth try so it was very pleasing to get that and secure the bonus point. From a personal point of view it was nice to end the drought. It’s been a while, but it’s not something I’m particularly interested in myself. The guys in the press have been egging me for the last year or so for not scoring tries. I’m still 25 or 30 short of the record for games without a try, so perhaps I’ll go for that one next time.

“He (Castrogiovanni) has done that before, but it’s probably more surprising seeing me do it! It’s always nice to see the fat boys getting a bit of a run in for a score and Castro’s try was very well taken.”

The league-leaders haven’t played since the Irish game on March 6th due to international fixtures, and George admitted that the players are keen to get back into action.

“It’s been two weeks and we’ve trained very hard. We were given a week off after our last game but I wasn’t able to get away because of family stuff, so I came in and trained on my own. The guys came back from family breaks last week and we trained pretty hard.

“It’s nice to have a bit of a break in the season, but towards the end of last week it felt like being back in pre-season again, without the hot sun unfortunately. The guys are desperately keen to get back playing now, even the guys coming back from international duty. I know from experience that it’s good to come back to your club and get back into the swing of it again after being away with England for eight weeks.”

With the recent announcement that Lewis Moody will be turning out for Bath next season and speculation linking a number of players with a summer departure, George is keen to stay at Welford Road and remains confident that the club can maintain it’s success despite the changes to personnel.

“I’ve got another year on my contract, so I’m going nowhere as far as I know. There are guys leaving and that’s something we’ll have to deal with. Over the last few years we have lost players that have served the club well, through retirement and through moving on, and that sort of thing happens. I think this year we’ve probably seen a few more leave than we’ve experienced in the last few years, but it’s just something we’ve got to get over and build up again next pre-season. Until then we’ve got a league programme to finish off and I know all the guys that are leaving will be 100% committed to that.”

Despite the anticipated summer changes, Chuter doesn’t see next season as one of transition.

“I think transitional seasons aren’t something that we really experience at this club. Many guys will leave at the end of the year, but there are always guys coming in, whether it’s through the Academy or from other clubs, who have already played a bit of rugby.

“We don’t generally have a massive load of brand new players or young players and I think a transitional period is generally for teams that are re-building from scratch. I don’t think Leicester have ever really had to do that just because of the youth policy and the Academy systems in place.

“Of course, you’ve got to bed in new players and they take a bit of time, but again we’ve been very fortunate in the last four or five years that the guys who have come in during the off-season have settled in really quickly. A lot of them have gone on to play a really significant role in their first year, which is credit to the guys themselves and credit to the Leicester squad for integrating them very quickly.”

The 33-year-old is still enjoying his rugby and hasn’t given much thought to his plans for retirement. Whilst George isn’t considering following former team-mates Martin Johnson and Neil Back into coaching, he hasn’t ruled out concentrating on his music career.

“I can’t get any lower with the music, so why not? I’ve not really put any serious thought into it and I still feel that physically I’ve got a few years left in me yet, so I suppose that time is on my side. I think the older you get, the more you start thinking about that sort of stuff. I’ve not really come from any particular career background. I have worked but I never had a full-time career, so I’m not too sure, but anybody with any offers… please write in to Soar Magazine and let me know!

“Whether I stay involved in rugby or not I don’t know. To be honest, coaching isn’t something that’s really sparked my imagination but I suppose as you go along things do change and things crop up. As it stands at the moment I’ve got no real direction.”

As well as his famed love for music and all things Elvis Presley, the combative hooker enjoys writing a regular column for the Tigers programme.

“The players read it and most of them absolutely love it, but they never tell you that! They prefer to give me stick for it, but I do enjoy doing it. I did it regularly a few years ago but I lost a bit of the spark and the imagination, so I stopped doing it for a couple of years. From then on, all I got asked about was the programme! Nobody wanted to speak to me about rugby, they only wanted to speak to me about when I was going to do the programme again. Under the weight of that pressure I had to start again!

“I’m enjoying it and I think since I last did it we’ve got some different characters in the squad that need the mickey taking. It’s great that the guys actually buy into it. A lot of them could become offended at stuff and probably have a quiet word with me. I don’t want to offend anybody and the guys take it in the right spirit. To be honest, a lot of the stuff I write is just what goes on day-in and day-out in the changing room in terms of mickey-taking and pranks that go on, so they could sue me for libel, but they’d lose because it’s all true!

“Some of the scenarios perhaps aren’t true but the sort of humour that goes in there is pretty much what happens day to day in a rugby club. There’s a lot of mickey-taking and at times it could be construed as quite offensive from the outside, but we’re all pretty close and the humour is very funny.”

For Part 2 of our interview with George, click here.