Match action
OWEN Williams was the darling of Welford Road as he avenged last weekend’s savage beating by Munster in Limerick with a magnificent 55 metre penalty in the penultimate minute of this European Cup cliffhanger.
As the kick dipped from its initially high trajectory to clear the crossbar by inches, the Leicester fans in the record 24,213 crowd let out a roar which was as much relief as delight.
All that was needed to claim a two point victory was for the Tigers to catch the restart and play out the last few seconds, and they had scraped too hard to let it slip, and the ball was duly booted high into the stands.
If Leicester fans were due some early Christmas cheer, it will not have been lost on most of them that euphoria at scraping a home win in Europe is not what has built the formidable reputation that this Tigers side has inherited – and has been in danger of losing. How times change.
The truth is that Leicester have been losing their hard-bitten aura bit by bit over the last few years, and when Munster took a huge chunk out of it last weekend to inflict a record 38-0 European defeat, the Tigers looked mortally wounded.
It sparked immediate speculation that Richard Cockerill’s long tenure at the club could end with him being shown the door this week if the Leicester rugby director and his team failed to deliver at home.
Leicester have never tolerated failure for long, and so it is not fanciful to believe that as this match see-sawed wildly in the last 25 minutes Cockerill’s future was in the balance too.
It was Williams who came to the rescue, finishing with an impeccable goal-kicking tally of six from six – and Leicester could not have won this without his unerring accuracy, not to mention the sheer power and timing with which he struck the match-clinching wonder-kick.
A first-half which was as scrappy as it was intense saw Tyler Bleyendaal’s two early penalties give Munster a 6-0 lead, before Leicester added to the tension with Manu Tuilagi sin-binned by the overzealous referee, Pascal Gauzere for an innocuous shoulderto-shoulder challenge on Rory Scannell.
However, they regrouped enough just before halftime to allow Williams to level the account at 6-6 with two late penalties.
Williams’ icy composure was evident when, with ten minutes of the second-half played and Munster leading 9-6 after a third Bleyendaal penalty, he slammed over a long-range kick to level the account.
At last, with the match moving towards the final quarter, Leicester began to string together some coherent moves, where before the pressure of the occasion was reflected in the waywardness of their catch and pass.
With Ed Slater managing to rescue a fumble, Jack Roberts – a pocket-dynamo who was Leicester’s most lively back – made a buzzsaw cut deep into the Munster half. As the Leicester forwards rammed their way into the 22, Munster’s rugged captain Peter O’Ma- hony killed the ball – a tactic he adopted almost every time the home side threatened – and when Williams kicked the penalty the Tigers had the lead for the first time.
The end-to-end stuff continued with the Irish side laying siege to the Leicester line as Conor Murray strove in vain to put one of the taxi rank of Munster carriers through. Instead, the Tigers scrambled free with Adam Thompstone breaking-out, and kicking deep into the Munster 22. Simon Zebo covered across, and when he was tempted into a late tackle to stop Thompstone from following-up he earned himself a yellow-card – which, with
only 15 minutes left to play, left his team-mates in the lurch.
With Williams punishing the foul to make it 15-9, and Munster down to 14 men they were in the mire – but they soon hauled themselves out. They forced Leicester into desperate defence, and from an O’Mahony catch at the second of two driving line-outs their all-action hooker, Niall Scannell, steamed round the corner of the maul to crash over.
Before the conversion they trailed by a point, and when Bleyendaal slipped backwards as he kicked Leicester jeers turned to Munster cheers as the ball wobbled over the bar to give them a 16-15 advantage with three minutes left.
However, the Munster celebrations were shortlived as Leicester squeezed the all important penalty out of them when Jaco Taute failed to release at the breakdown. Up stepped Williams, to breathe some life into Cockerill’s wounded Tigers.