Against the backdrop of a classic rugby union's greatest contests, the match between the Tigers and the visitors was heavily influenced by the emotion during the interval than any rugby on the pitch.
Martin Johnson led a phalanx of Tigers former players to pay tribute to the great Lewis Moody, after he announced his diagnosis with MND.
When Moody last pulled on a Leicester shirt at Welford Road, a decade and a half past, before moving to their rivals Bath for the last two years in a distinguished playing career, Leicester were more or less close to their very best, whereas Bath found themselves enduring a long drought devoid of championship success. The landscape has shifted dramatically since then. The Tigers’ great rivals arrived as champions, marking the first occasion they have called themselves that since the 1990s.
An Passionate Welcome on Home Turf
The Tigers, on a wave of emotion, offered them an old-fashioned welcome, relishing their status as underdogs in their own stadium, the 18,000 Midlanders greatly inspired by Moody’s confession at half-time that, no matter where he may live, this famous ground remains the home of his rugby heart.
In retrospect, Bath were always up against it. True to form, in a last-minute assault on the Bath line, Leicester managed to coax a crucial penalty out of the Bath defence.
The Climax
Billy Searle, who replaced the impressive James O'Connor, the experienced Wallaby making his first start for Leicester, darted blind, and the Bath prop caught him high, for which offence he received a yellow card. With the last kick, Searle landed the penalty from a difficult angle to steal the win.
It felt like being transported back of Moody’s pomp. Certainly, Leicester, who climb a little higher in the mid-table bun fight, can take great encouragement that their traditional, direct approach can still yield results, no matter the pedigree of the opponent.
A Tale of Two Game Plans
The visitors were sublime when in possession. So Leicester, after a bewildering first half-hour which saw them trail 17-7, learned to deprive them of any. A deluge of penalties conceded by Bath kept Bath under constant pressure, their forwards thoroughly outplayed in the scrums and lineouts for most of the match.
The Tigers' three touchdowns were remarkably similar, all scored from close range; Bath's three tries were studies in poetry. Frost, Underhill, and Redpath scored the tries, before and after Cracknell's score for Tigers. Subsequently, capitalizing on the penalty count, Reffell and Smith powered over for tries either side of half-time.
A Tense Conclusion
Those scores gave Leicester a narrow advantage, which they held for the majority of the second period. It appeared inevitable before Bath won enough ball to score their fourth. In fact, their breakthrough came with a rare penalty in the scrum, with their South African reinforcements now on the field. The fly-half, having missed two of his three earlier attempts, landed the kick inside the final ten minutes.
That only inspired Leicester for one last, brutish assault, set up by the lively Ollie Hassell-Collins down the left. Having won the penalty that put Bath ahead in a situation he relishes, the unfortunate prop gave away a penalty in a vulnerable position. There could be only one result.
