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 (Vallejos 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

Some match photos here

Post match interview audio courtesy of Premiership Rugby

Sounds about right to me, Chisholms being dropping passes all season and he carried on yesterday as wellas silly mistakes from most of the rest of the backline at key points.

Both teams looked disinterested yesterday which is u[psetting, especially as a lot of us went along to the game to watch.

Well done to Tigers, you have some real danger men in the backs there and the forwards were alot smarter then their Quins counterparts.

the forwards were alot smarter then their Quins counterparts..

Our forwards the 'smarter' of the two? That's not happened much this season, wish I'd seen it, good to see though as both sides played with two opensides so the breakdown should have been interesting. Hopefully fielding a proper enforcer in Green paid dividends, we're not promoted the enforcer style second rows enough recently.

Good to see the backs outshining their much lauded Quins counter parts though, we really could use some of the academy boys stepping up and putting themselves in contention for the first team. Particularly Ford, Lewington and Forsyth. Kiwireddevil how did the Tigers hookers get on? They were both young academy prospects (Chuter pulled out on the day) and it would be good if they were looking the part. I thought Woods scored the third Tigers try but you've got Ben Pienaar down?

I thought Woods scored the third Tigers try but you've got Ben Pienaar down?.

Apologies Kiwireddevil it was the beeb score updates service lying to me.

Tigers were schooling us at the breakdown at times, very Irish in their play and we decided to be the English.

Ah Yappy that is sweet music to my ears. We've been increasingly more like the English national squad at the breakdown of late and it's been hurting us espeically in the HEC where Ulster and Clermont were both much better at slowing and stealing the ball on the floor. We've not played the ref at all well this season.

With Waldrom and Croft called up by England I wonder if Cockerill has some evil plan to play a backrow of Woods, Salvi and Newby with young Armes on the bench. Might well help us ahead of the game away to Sarries.

Sam I am dreading the game against Leicester.

No Kelly Brown for 10 weeks! Burger still injured. Joubert - ?? Saull in the Saxons....

Definitely agree that English sides need to be more savvy at the breakdown.

I simply don't think enough players contest the rucks.

You been on holiday B? Not seen you around these parts for a little while.

Sam I am dreading the game against Leicester

Well when you join the big boys the call ups come thick and fast. If it's any concelation we'll probably be missing Castro, Cole. Deacon, Parling, Croft, Waldrom (though he may be released for the game) and Youngs. Flood and Manu will apparently be given this game to get game time before being called up by England.

Saull in the Saxons....

The Saxons games will have finished so you'll have Saull and Spencer back. The Saxons games only clash with the LV Cup. Unless of course Sarries opt to let Spencer play in the under 20 6N, I'm unsure whether Tigers will let Ford go to play or retain him for the league games (I'm hoping retain for the league games).

formerly known as Sam wrote:

I thought Woods scored the third Tigers try but you've got Ben Pienaar down?.

Apologies Kiwireddevil it was the beeb score updates service lying to me.

No worries Sam. There was a little debate over who scored the 3rd try in the media room post match, and there was a little consternation during Woods' interview when a couple of journos didn't realise he was joking when he tried to claim the try. He then confirmed that Pienaar got it down with a "helping push" (or similar) from himself.

As far as the hookers go, the Leicester scrum was quite solid, and the starting 2 did a bit of work around the field (in the last 20 minutes I was (a) trying to get life back into frozen fingers and (b) really regretting not having visited the gents before kickoff so my concentration wavered a little!). Leicester did lose a couple of lineouts though (if you have a look through the photos I posted I managed to catch their lock not quite reaching an overthrown ball).

Ah that would explain things, Woods is known as a bit of a joker and with both players wearing black scrum caps from a distance it might not be easy to tell them apart. I didn't expect massive things from Stevens at hooker but if he delivered a decent performance that is good, he's only 20 so there is plenty of time for him to develop. Hooker is a problem position for the club these days.

formerly known as Sam wrote:

Sam I am dreading the game against Leicester

Well when you join the big boys the call ups come thick and fast. If it's any concelation we'll probably be missing Castro, Cole. Deacon, Parling, Croft, Waldrom (though he may be released for the game) and Youngs. Flood and Manu will apparently be given this game to get game time before being called up by England.

Saull in the Saxons....

The Saxons games will have finished so you'll have Saull and Spencer back. The Saxons games only clash with the LV Cup. Unless of course Sarries opt to let Spencer play in the under 20 6N, I'm unsure whether Tigers will let Ford go to play or retain him for the league games (I'm hoping retain for the league games).

Well that's really fair...Giving Flood and Manu back for the Saracens game... We could potentially have out our 1st choice and 2nd choice 10s, 1st choice 12, 1st choice 6, 1st,2nd and 3rd choice 9s out, our 1st choice 15, one of our 1st choice locks. Oh and our 1st choice loosehead, as well as yet another loosehead/tighthead. One of our first choice wingers too.

The list would be:Brown,Hodgson,Farrell,Barritt,Botha,Stevens,Gill,Goode,Wigglesworth,De Kock,Spencer,Strettle - 12 players out.

Losing the playmakers would be the biggest losses.

Flood and Manu need game time if they are going to be match fit (a dodgey first result may change the mind of Lancaster). We'll still be on our 3rd and 4th choice locks, 3rd choice tighthead, 2nd choice 6, third choice 8 and second choice 9. These things happen, you'll still have 9 less missing players than we had when you came to Welford Rd.

You complained about all the Sarries players being overlooked for call ups and now you have them you find that being in the usual Tigers position isn't as fun as it looks.

"Playmakers" is pushing the description of the Saracens midfield as bit isnt it