Watch every second of the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nPerese joined Leicester from the NSW Waratahs in 2024, playing 27 games for the club in the midfield.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll miss this group and I\u2019m proud to have been a part of it. There’s still a job to be done though\u00a0and I\u2019m fully committed to what\u2019s ahead,” Perese said.<\/p>\n
“I’d like to say a big thank you to all my coaches and staff for the support and development during my time here.”<\/p>\n
“To the incredible fans, thank you for the unwavering support. It\u2019s been an honour to represent this club.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, O’Connor has spent the past season there after moving from the Crusaders.<\/p>\n
O’Connor joined the club straight after leading the Wallabies to victory over South Africa at the Rugby Championship.<\/p>\n
“Firstly I\u2019d like to thank the Tigers fans, truly has been an awesome experience playing in front of a packed out Mattioli Woods Welford Road,” O’Connor said.<\/p>\n
“To my team mates, coaches and the organisation. Thank you for welcoming us into your family and making the transition back North seamless.”<\/p>\n
“But for now, my eyes are still firmly on the business end of this season. I truly feel this group can go all the way and I\u2019m eager to help us achieve this goal.”<\/p>\n
“Izzy has offered some great moments in big games and applies himself diligently during training. \u00a0He\u2019s been fantastic to work with, and I think that due to his carry being so impactful his defensive work at 13 goes unheralded,” former Wallabies assistant and Leicester coach Geoff Parling said.<\/p>\n
“It was great to get Rabs (James O’Connor) with us, and he has been brilliant in bringing an experienced, calming influence to our group of backs.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Capped Wallabies James O’Connor and Izaia Perese are set to depart English club Leicester at the end of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,309649,760,85],"class_list":["post-639450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-english-premiership","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}