Misery for Manu
Tuilagi breaks down yet again
Who needs Test rugby to get the juices flowing? There was drama, incident, see-saw action, yellow cards (two against Leicester) and news value in this match from first minute to last.
Not all of it was welcome, with injuries to a host of front-line England players, including both wings, Jonny May (head knock) and Elliot Daly (compounded dislocation of fingers), while the most pitiful sight was that of Manu Tuilagi departing the field in the early stages clutching a pectoral muscle in his chest.
Misery for Manu and great grief for Daly, who was led from the field at half-time with an oxygen mask over his face.
“It was a bad dislocation and the bone might have come out,” said Wasps director of rugby Dai Young of the incident when the wing tried to strip the ball from Telusa Veainu. “It was quite nasty.”
Tuilagi was reported to be optimistic about the severity of his injury, but that has been a trait of many of his previous mishaps.
“We have fingers crossed, but we won’t really know until the scan,” said Matt O’connor, Leicester’s head coach. “He was adamant that he couldn’t continue.”
The club game has taken a kicking in the wake of England’s woeful Natwest Six Nations campaign, dismissed in the debate about central contracts as if it were a mere sideshow. On this viewing, it offers outstanding value for money, with Leicester recording their first victory over Wasps in six matches, a win that takes them up to fifth place, three points adrift of Newcastle, whom they face next month.
“We couldn’t have afforded to lose today and it keeps us right in the mix,” said O’connor.
It was nail-biting stuff, the platform chiselled by the scrummaging of Ellis Genge in the second half and delivered by George Ford’s boot with his third penalty four minutes from the end.
Even if there are more errors at club level, with both sides spurning far too many chances for the heartrate of their respective coaches, thunderous occasions such as these are no bad preparation for the edge and fury to be found in the international arena.
There was plenty of physicality on offer, thumping hits and a cover tackle from Leicester’s Mathew Tait that was even better than the one England’s Sam Underhill had pulled off against Wales. Tait somehow got back to haul down Wasps scrumhalf Dan Robson as he looked to dive over after a 60-metre interception run. That play alone was worth the admission price for the 25,849 crowd.
Tait is old Leicester, schooled in their never-say-die ways. If anything, the tenor of this Leicester performance was in keeping with those values, Tigers wobbling but never collapsing, keeping in the fight despite trailing 15-7 at the break and having first Nick Malouf sent to the sin-bin for a dangerous tackle on Christian Wade, followed by Veainu in the second half for a deliberate knock-on.
There was a big upturn in their fortunes when prop Genge came on for his first match in three months after recovering from a shoulder injury. His return to action, and what an impact he made, is good news for club and country.
Leicester have at last found some of their old cussedness and rigour in recent times, hauling themselves up the league with four successive victories. Yet they were all too aware that their push for the play-offs had to be sustained. And for that to happen they had to maximise every little chance and then ride their luck.
They managed neither after their quick-fire opening score, No 8 Sione Kalamafoni touching down from a trademark Tigers driving line-out maul in the third minute. If they had made best use of that early momentum, they would have been 17-0 ahead by the 14th minute. As it was, they had botched two scores, lost May and Tuilagi and conceded a try to Daly. On such things can seasons be shaped. But they found a way back.
There was a lot of fizz and energy in their game, but they were rushed and ragged in equal measure, too. They created chances but could not finish. They need to be operating at this level more often to find that sort of fluency. Wasps were also profligate although, in full flow, there is no team in the country as easy on the eye.
With Danny Cipriani probing and creating in the pivot role, and wings with the predatory menace of Daly and Wade, there is danger in every attack.
Daly touched down for his second try in the 24th minute, the wing having triggered the sequence with a good aerial take from a defensive clearance and then being on hand to take the scoring pass from Thomas Young. But that was to be it, amazingly so given the ebb and flow of the match.
“We didn’t take our chances, didn’t show enough patience and composure, despite making 10 clear line-breaks, and that is disappointing,” said Young. “You’ve got to be able to nail those sort of opportunities. And the scrum was a big turnaround in the second half.”
It was. But the pace never faltered. Breathless, brilliant stuff.