Former Leicester Tigers player Ben Kay has said that Matt O'Connor lost the head coach's role at the club because the club's board felt that actions agreed in a review of last season had not been acted upon.

O'Connor was sacked on Monday just one game into the new Gallagher Premiership season, a 40-6 defeat at Exeter Chiefs, with Geordan Murphy taking over as interin head coach.

Kay, who is a director on the Tigers board, also told BT Sport's Rugby Tonight programme that once the decision to dismiss O'Connor had been made, the best option was to act immediately.

The England World Cup winner said: "The finish towards the end of last year wasn't acceptable by Leicester standards. Matt agreed with that and said it wasn't acceptable.

"There was obviously a review at the end of the year. It wasn't just down to one result in fact losing at Exeter wouldn't have caused this to happen solely on its own.

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"But during that review a number of areas were highlighted and involved in that review were a number of senior players, the whole coaching staff, members of the rugby committee that sit on the board and actions were put forward to how we could ensure that didn't happen again next season and Matt agreed those actions, he came up with a lot of the actions himself and just the manner of the performance on Saturday meant that the board came away feeling that those actions hadn't been acted on and the agreed path forward had not been acted on.

"The easy thing to do would have been to leave it for a few weeks - it would have been far less embarrassing for the club to leave it a few weeks - but once you make that decision you have just got to get on with it and you have to think of the future and think of the path you are going to take and give the next person the time to actually make a difference."