There is turning over a new leaf, and there is shaking the whole tree. The feeling at Welford Road this summer has been of the latter. A new stand is under way that will push capacity out to 23,000 and will bear the name of Caterpillar, the new club sponsor, and, most potently of all, the coaching staff has undergone a makeover.

But this is Leicester, a byword for solidity, a perennial example to the rest of the Guinness Premiership; the commercial drive has always been there, way back through the amateur days never mind the professional era, but to work through head coaches with such rapidity is uncharacteristic.

In the first five months of 2007 Pat Howard’s players lifted two of the three trophies available to them, losing only the Heineken Cup in the final to London Wasps. Richard Cockerill held the fort for the next five months until the arrival, after an outstanding World Cup campaign, of Marcelo Loffreda, the first Argentinian to become head coach to a Premiership club.

It was a bold move which, unusually for the Leicester board, failed. Whether Loffreda would have made a fist of the job given more than seven months will never be known; he fell instead to the ruthlessness that has been part of the Leicester make-up these past 30 years and now Heyneke Meyer is the man in charge. He must feel quite at home, coming from South Africa where the turnover in coaches has been so great since the readmission to international competition in 1992.

But Meyer’s arrival is different in the sense that he had the choice not to come to England. After a successful tenure as coach to the Blue Bulls in Pretoria, the man from Nelspruit, in northeastern South Africa, chose to step away from the game after Peter de Villiers was preferred as Jake White’s successor to coach the Springboks and De Villiers, it could be said, is going through the same problems with his national team as Loffreda endured with Leicester.

“If I was to come back,” Meyer said, “it needed to be with a special club, a club that could be the best in the world, and this is one of them.” It is not just Loffreda who has gone: Neil Back, Andy Key and Jamie Hamilton, all members of the Leicester boot room having graduated from playing to coaching, have left Welford Road, a clear-out that gives Meyer the chance to build his own staff as well as shaping a team who relinquished both the Premiership title and the EDF Energy Cup a few months ago.

“I had a lot of offers from around the world,” Meyer said, “but it has never been all about the money for me. Of course that’s important but it’s about making a better team and I truly believe that the next big team will come out of Europe. But I also want to see how players develop after rugby, what sort of people they become.”

Meyer, 40, was no great shakes as a player at school or at the University of Pretoria where he studied sports psychology. But he always wanted to coach and university gave him the opportunity, at 20, to do so and brought him into contact with some of South Africa’s leading thinkers, John Williams, the former Springboks coach, among them. He also trained with one of his country’s leading retail companies and has adapted business methods to his rugby approach.

“I have very high standards as a coach,” Meyer said. “My teams can win by 30 or 40 points and I won’t be happy. I’m not aware of what has happened at Leicester in the past year, I want to get my own career going again. I won’t make predictions but I’ll give whatever it takes to make Leicester successful.”

For a man who emphasises the need to push boundaries in conditioning, it will be frustrating for Meyer (whose own fitness took a knock last month after he damaged an Achilles tendon) that several leading players, Lewis Moody, Louis Deacon and Martin Castrogiovanni among them, will not be able to start the season because of injury, while Seru Rabeni must sit out the next six weeks under suspension.

That will not stop him tapping into the work ethic and rugby intelligence available to him, personified by Martin Corry and Aaron Mauger, the former New Zealand centre. “I want the players to express themselves,” Meyer said. “I’ve been impressed by the skills I’ve seen, by the size of the backs, and there are some brilliant structures in place. But above all, I want to see selflessness, players playing for each other, enjoying being together as a team. I want to sustain that family environment for which Leicester has always been renowned.”

Club information: Head coach: Heyneke Meyer Captain: Martin Corry Website: www.leicestertigers.com Address: Aylestone Road, Leicester, LE2 7TR Telephone: 0116 285 4766 Tickets: 08701 28 34 30

Squad:

English unless stated

Internationals IN CAPITALS

Forwards -

MARCOS AYERZA (Arg, 18 caps); Richard Blaze; SANTIAGO BONORINO (Arg, 10); MARTIN CASTROGIOVANNI (It, 54); GEORGE CHUTER (21); Dan Cole; MARTIN CORRY (64); Jordan Crane; TOM CROFT (4); MEFIN DAVIES (Wales, 39); Brett Deacon; LOUIS DEACON (8); Ben Herring (NZ); BEN KAY (60); BENJAMIN KAYSER (Fr, 2); LEWIS MOODY (53); CRAIG NEWBY (NZ, 3); Ben Pienaar; Greg Sammons; Boris Stankovich; MARCO WENTZEL (SA, 2); JULIAN WHITE (44); Ben Woods.

Backs -

Julien Dupuy (Fr); HARRY ELLIS (18 caps); Ayoola Erinle; TOBY FLOOD (18); DAN HIPKISS (6); DERICK HOUGAARD (SA, 8);AARON MAUGER (NZ, 45); GEORDAN MURPHY (Ire, 58); Johne Murphy (Ire); SERU RABENI (Fiji, 32); Matt Smith; Greig Tonks; ALESANA TUILAGI (Samoa, 19); TOM VARNDELL (4); Sam Vesty; Ben Youngs; Tom Youngs.

Fixtures:

Sept 7 Gloucester (A)

Sept 13 London Irish (H)

Sept 20 Worcester Warriors (A)

Sept 26 London Wasps (H)

Oct 1 Northampton (H)

Oct 4 Bath (A)

Oct 12 Ospreys (H)

Oct 18 Treviso (A)

Oct 25 Cardiff Blues (A)

Oct 31/Nov 1/2 Sale Sharks (H)

Nov 15 Bath (A)

Nov 22 Harlequins (H)

Nov 28 Sale Sharks (A)

Dec 6 Perpignan (H)

Dec 14 Perpignan (A)

Dec 20 Newcastle Falcons (H)

Dec 27 Harlequins (A, Twickenham)

Jan 4 Bath (H)

Jan 10 Northampton (A)

Jan 16/17/18 Treviso (H)

Jan 23/24/25 Ospreys (A)

Feb 15 London Wasps (A)

Feb 21 Worcester Warriors (H)

March 1 London Irish (A)

March 7 Gloucester (H)

March 13 Bristol (A)

March 21 Saracens (H)

March 27 Newcastle Falcons (A)

April 4 Sale Sharks (H)

April 19 Saracens (A)

April 25 Bristol (H)