LV= Cup Harlequins vs Leicester Tigers

Harlequins 9 lost to Leicester Tigers 19 in the LV= Cup
By Pete Cresswell 28 January 2011.

On a sunny but chilly day at Twickenham Stoop Leicester Tigers scored three tries to none to beat Harlequins 19-9 in their round 3 LV= Anglo-Welsh Cup match.

Both Harlequins and Leicester Tigers rotated their squads for the match in front of a good-sized crowd of 13,780; resting players who had seen action recently in the Heineken Cup, while the two teams were also missing a number of players selected for Representative squads.

Leicester opened the scoring after 5 minutes in with a superb try under the posts by inside centre Andy Forsyth after Harlequins' Rory Clegg missed touch from a penalty and the Leicester backs ran from inside their own 22. George Ford's conversion gave the Tigers a 7-0 lead.

Six minutes later Harlequins narrowed the gap to four points after Leicester infringed inside their 22 following a concerted Harlequins attack using the full width of the field. This allowed Rory Clegg to slot 3 points.

While both sides continued to try and attack, the remainder of the half was scoreless. Leicester had slightly the better of the forward exchanges in the first half; while their backs ran good lines and hit the ball at pace. However they were guilty of a lack of patience on attack, too often resorting to grubber kicks and up-and-unders inside Harlequins' 22.

Harlequins' backs were a little too lateral at times, though they were certainly willing to throw the ball around, even pulling behind-the-back passes out of their bag of tricks. They could have been ahead but for handling errors at crucial moments.

Ten minutes into the 2nd half Leicester were penalised for collapsing a scrum, and Clegg kicked the penalty from about 40 yards out to narrow the gap to 7-6.

Five minutes later Ford missed an opportunity to take the lead back to four points after Harlequins were penalised for the tackler not releasing. However from the resulting 22 metre drop-out Leicester winger Alex Lewington kicked through and won the race to dot down for a good try. Ford missed the conversion attempt leaving Tigers ahead 12-6.

Leicester's lead was cut to 3 points in the 57th minute as Clegg punished them for not rolling away in the tackle.

The final score of the match came in the 69th minute as Leicester managed to work an overlap on the left for Ben Pienaar to go over in the corner and, after a short delay, be awarded the try. Harlequins began throwing the ball around in an attempt to come back, and were rewarded with an attacking chance after Leicester collapsed a maul, earning the team a warning from referee Hodges. From the resulting lineout Harlequins fullback Ross Chisholm knocked on 5 metres out. Harlequins regrouped after Leicester's clearance, and should have scored but for a dropped pass in midfield. At the time advantage was being played as Ford was adjudged off-side and sin binned for the final 40 seconds. However Clegg missed the fairly easy penalty kick and the score remained 19-9.

The result keeps Leicesters' hopes of making the LV= Cup semi-finals and severely dents Harlequins' hopes of progressing.

Handling errors cost Harlequins dearly throughout the match as they squandered a number of attacking opportunities inside Leicester's 22. After the match Harlequins Head Coach John Kingston said that Leicester "took advantage of the errors that we made" and that they were "deserving to win the game." He went on to express disappointment at Harlequins' performance levels, particularly in front of such a large home crowd.

"That was not to the levels that we expect and aspire to," he commented. "Yes there's a lot of players out there who are not playing regularly but we're a squad and they will be aspiring to put their hand up. Several of them will be very disappointed because they don't go out there not to perform well."

Kingston lamented the team's inability to turn their dominance of possession into points and praised Leicester for their defence and for making the most of their opportunities.

Praising the efforts of his players who have been selected for representative sides Kingston said "We've got an awful lot ahead of us though and an awful lot of positive things to look forward to."

Leicester Tigers Director of Rugby Richard Cockerill said "It was a bit of an odd game really, both sides trying to play and not a huge amount of structure to any of it." He felt that the set-piece was scrappy, but was pleased that Tigers had taken their opportunities.

Cockerill picked out several of his players for praise: "I thought [Andy] Forsyth and Dante Mama, who normally plays at Loughborough Students, did really well and [Alex] Lewington's got some pace." He went on to praise the development of 18 year old fly-half George Ford, who is set to play for England U20 next week.

On the Tigers' injury front Cockerill was hopeful that Toby Flood might be fit enough to come off the bench next week, while Manu Tuilagi is "about a week further away".

Cockerill was critical of the way centre Billy Twelvetrees has handled his upcoming departure from the club, saying he would "rather deal with people face-to-face and be up front".


Harlequins
15 Ross Chisholm, 14 Seb Stegmann, 13 Ben Urdapilleta (Lindsay-Hague 63 mins), 12 Tom Casson, 11 Tom Williams, 10 Rory Clegg, 9 Richard Bolt, 1 Mark Lambert, 2 Rob Buchanan, 3 Tim Fairbrother (Collier 57mins), 4 Pete Browne, 5 Charlie Matthews (Cain 65 mins), 6 Luke Wallace, 7 Will Skinner (c), 8 Tom Guest
Replacements: 16 Nic Mayhew, 17 Daryl Marfo, 18 Will Collier, 19 Tom Vallejos, 20 Chris York, 21 Sam Stuart, 22 Charlie Walker, 23 Ollie Lindsay-Hague

Leicester Tigers:
15 Niall Morris, 14 Scott Hamilton (Smith 57mins), 13 Dante Mama, 12 Andy Forsyth, 11 Alex Lewington, 10 George Ford (yellow card 79 mins), 9 Sam Harrison (Grindall 63 mins), 1 Boris Stankovich, 2 Jimmy Stevens, 3 Logovii Mulipola (Harris 63 mins), 4 Calum Green, 5 Graham Kitchener, 6 Ben Woods (c), 7 Tom Armes (Doyle 57 mins), 8 Ben Pienaar
Replacements: 16 Harry Thacker, 17 Ryan Bower, 18 Jonny Harris, 19 Joe Cain, 20 James Doyle, 21 James Grindal, 22 Jeremy Staunton, 23 Matt Smith

Referee: Leighton Hodges
Assistant referees Andrew Small and Ashley Rowden

Player of the Match: Sam Harrison, Leicester Tigers

"both Harlequins and Leicester Tigers both rotated their squads" the second both sounds better as have, enjoy the game.

Cheers.

Leicester opened the scoring 5 mins in with a superb try under the posts by Andy Forsyth after Harlequins missed touch from a penalty and the Leicester backs ran from inside their own 22.

Will be editing these together after.

11 mins in Quins received a penalty in front of the posts 10 metres out following a pair of sweeping sideline-to-sideline moves. Rory Clegg kicked the easy 3 points.

Half time Tigers lead 7-3.

Leicester had slightly the better of the forward exchanges in the first half; while their backs ran good lines and hit the ball at pace. However they were guilty of a lack of patience on attack, too often resorting to grubber kicks and up-and-unders inside Harlequins' 22.

Harlequins' backs were a little too lateral at times, though they were certainly willing to throw the ball around, even pulling behind-the-back passes out of their bag of tricks. They could have been ahead but for handling errors at crucial moments.

10 minutes into the 2nd half Leicester were penalised for collapsing a scrum, and Clegg kicked the penalty from about 40 yards.

Referee: Leighton Hodges
Assistant referees Andrew Small and Ashley Rowden

Still have manager's comments to type up, and some photos to sort.

good experience? Half time snacks?

Adam D wrote:good experience? Half time snacks?

Enjoyable day. They put out sandwiches & biscuits in the media room pre-match, and there were cans of Guinness there afterwards (hardly any of the journos partook though). The Press "Box" itself was quite well put together, a nice big bench in front of you for laptops and notes, wifi was good too. My fingers were frozen by half-time though. And next time I'll make sure to head to the mens before kickoff!

Some match photos here: https://s1147.photobucket.com/albums/o556/kiwireddevil/Harlequins%20vs%20Leicester%20Tigers%2028%20Jan%202012/

Post match interview audio: http://www.premiershiprugby.com/tools/multimedia.php?location=mainsite&projguid=F73398C871664F068708E2F7190C0348&medid=10676&css=/style/14117.css&lang=ENG

the remainder of the hlf

Is he ALF's cousin?

Cheers Glas.

I've just run the text through MS Word's spelling and grammar checker and it's coming up fine (after I fixed another couple of typos), so I think I'll publish.

Can you proof read my effort?