London Irish 18 Leicester 12:THE AVERAGE average number of tries scored in the English Premiership is down by around 25 per cent so far this season, and this game will stick in the memory for all the wrong reasons.
If this is the best two of the country’s pre-eminent teams can muster it suggests two things: the English club game is experiencing a less than vintage year and the laws continue to favour unambitious sides over those prepared to take a few risks.
For Leicester to be rewarded with a losing bonus point for playing virtually no rugby also summed up the difference in mindset between the Premiership and the Heineken Cup.
In Europe teams have to show some ambition, even away from home, if they wish to escape their pool. Domestically, as a consequence of the season’s endless nature, it is mostly a war of attrition until the closing six weeks.
“The Premiership is so long,” sighed Richard Cockerill, the Tigers’ head coach, as aware as anyone his side’s performance fell way short of optimum levels.
He knows the defending champions will get better once they stumble out from beneath their injury cloud. Resources were so stretched this week their backs were unable to train together and the bench included teenager Andy Forsyth, a replacement for Nottingham against Coventry last weekend.
That said, the visiting pack still contained seven players in England’s elite or Saxons squads. Apart from a battered Lewis Moody and a bruised Tom Croft, they made worryingly little impact on a stop-start contest. If ever there was a moribund spectacle which made a compelling case for the return of clean, fast old-style ruck ball, this was it.
Had London Irish been their usual accurate selves in the first half, even so, they might still have won at a canter such was Leicester’s attacking impotency. Poor Lucas Amorosino on the left wing had the kind of game he will recall with a shudder for years to come and only a couple of fractional refereeing calls denied the Exiles, once when Ryan Lamb’s long pass to the electric Sailosi Tagicakibau was adjudged a whisker forward and again when Lamb was deprived of an opportunist score by a knock-on which may have come off a Tiger’s paw.
Lamb at least had the last laugh, kicking six penalties from eight attempts in an echo of his match-winning role against Leinster a fortnight earlier.
“He’s regaining the confidence he had in abundance in his youth,” said Irish’s head coach, Toby Booth, sensibly deflecting invitations to propose Lamb as England’s starting No 10 next month.
Of the England possibles keen to impress the watching Martin Johnson in the shorter term, the two who stood out were Moody and Paul Hodgson. Both delivered fine defensive efforts, as did Seilala Mapusua in the Exiles midfield, and the direct result was a stalemate uncomfortably similar to last season’s grand final.
LONDON IRISH: Hewat; Homer, Seveali’i, Mapasua, Tagicakibau; Lamb, Hodgson; Dermody (Murphy, 68), Coetzee (Paice, 56), Ion (Rautenbach, 64), Kennedy, Casey (capt; Roche, 56), Stowers, S Armitage, Hala’Ufia (Perry, 72).
LEICESTER: Hamilton; J Murphy, Hipkiss, Allen, Amorosino; Staunton, Grindal (B Youngs, 68); Ayerza, Chuter, White (Castrogiovanni, 5), Deacon (capt), Blaze (Parling, 55), Croft, Moody, Crane
Referee: W Barnes (Glouc).
l Guardian Service
