Rebuilt Leicester 'have so much natural talent' - Feury

Full-back Tess Feury is one of six Leicester players who played at the World Cup

Leicester Tigers are rolling up their sleeves for a challenging Premiership Women's Rugby season as they prepare for their opening game at Sale Sharks on Saturday.

The Tigers finished last-but-one in the table last season and have since lost Red Roses duo Meg Jones and Amy Cokayne, as well as Scotland's prolific wing Fran McGhie.

However USA international Tess Feury, who has fellow Eagle Emerson Allen for company at Leicester this season, believes an overhauled squad - with a dozen new faces - has the raw materials to deliver a competitive season together.

"I have truly seen an improvement, session to session, and if we can keep that up the results will take care of themselves," she told BBC Radio Leicester.

"We have so much natural-born talent and natural-born grit and now it is just putting that together.

"We want to play exciting rugby that we enjoy and that the fans can get behind and give people something to talk about.

"We're looking to get a win on the board (this weekend) but first and foremost we want to be physical, we want to be fast and we just want to come out with a fight.

"No matter what the result, it sets the tone and the standard for the season and we can just keep on building from there."

Leicester's opener - against the only team to finish below them last season - will be played at the 3,000-capacity Morson Stadium with a 19:00 BST kick-off slot.

"It is a little frustrating in our book. As female athletes we don't always get the best time slots and the best field venues," admitted Feury.

"Here at Tigers we play every single game in the stadium at Mattioli Woods Welford Road so we're really lucky to have that platform and that consistent home-field advantage.

"When we go away we never know what we're going to get, but at the end of the day we just have to get our heads down and play some rugby."