Rugby: Tough Kiwi pair making mark in Leicester

They're driving Leicester towards another English Premiership title and quite possibly the Heineken Cup crown of Europe too.

They're players of the old school, steeped in the ways and means of the game from their childhood days. Yet in a Rugby World Cup year neither has a hope of involvement in the world's premier tournament.

But that isn't to say Thomas Waldrom and Craig Newby aren't good enough. Together, they are proving the stand-out duo of the English club season. And their influence is so extensive on the Leicester club that many believe the Midlanders can clinch the double of Champions in England and European champions come May.

There might be a third title heading their way too, if things work out for the Tigers. Waldrom is already heavily tipped as the likely winner of the Player of the Season award. His excellence is acknowledged throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

Together, the pair are reminding everyone on this side of the world of the number of quality rugby players in New Zealand.

Of course, Leicester hardly needed reminding. Aaron Mauger was one of their more recent stars until injury and retirement ended his English sojourn. Newby and Waldrom have simply carried on and their example, the way they go about their business, is respected and appreciated.

The sustained excellence of Waldrom, 27, has been heralded throughout England. Will Greenwood, England's 2003 World Cup-winning centre and now a TV pundit, nicknamed him "Choo Choo", a reference to the "Thomas the Tank Engine" line he has used to describe the burly former Canterbury Crusaders back row man.

Waldrom has become Leicester's go-to man, the serial enforcer in the back row who breaks the gain line like waiters break seals on wine bottles. The statistics back up everyone's favourable impression of him. With 146, he has made the most carries in Premiership rugby this season. And in metres gained, 677, he is not only the top forward but second overall in that particular chart.

Waldrom is formidable - strong, mobile, powerful on the charge. With ball in hand, he invariably requires two or three opponents to down him but it is also his reading of the play, his positioning on the field, that make him special.

Perhaps the thrice-capped Newby, at 31, has not been quite such a stand-out performer. Yet, like Waldrom, he has started 11 of Leicester's 12 Aviva Premiership games this season and personified reliability.

Newby brings typical New Zealand qualities to his role: doggedness, immense ticker and a shrewd rugby brain. When Lewis Moody, the England captain, jumped at a more lucrative offer to desert Leicester for Bath, the Tigers asked Newby to move across the back row to open side.

"He has handled the switch superbly" says Leicester's director of rugby Richard Cockerill. "He has been superb for us." So much so that Leicester have just persuaded Rotorua-born Newby, 31, to stay another couple of years.

Peter Bills is a rugby writer for Independent News & Media