Williams leads way as Tigers eye play-offs
The Tigers have started to bare their teeth at the just the right time. A second successive crushing home victory kept Leicester firmly in the running for a play-off place and banished the memories of a miserable three-match losing streak that cost Richard Cockerill his job as director of rugby.
The physicality of Leicester’s pack destroyed Bristol, who were restricted to a damage-limitation exercise from an early stage. Leicester had the bonus point wrapped up after 27 minutes and added four more tries in their biggest win of the season. Having crushed Gloucester last week, Leicester appear to have turned a corner in a season that was unravelling around them.
“We have always been in contention for the play-offs and we believe we will be there at the end,” said Leicester head coach Aaron Mauger. “The confidence we have taken from our last two performances is really good for us. The belief has always been there, it’s just nice to trigger that with some good performances.
“Our performances have been better considering our previous form. We had lost three on the bounce in the Premiership and stuttered our way through Europe. We hadn’t been great prior to that but the last two weeks have been good for us.”
Blindside flanker Mike Williams showed why he is so highly regarded by England head coach Eddie Jones with what Mauger described as “a wrecking-ball” performance. Williams was superbly supported by his backrow colleagues Luke Hamilton and Brendon O’Connor, while Dominic Barrow and Mike Fitzgerald unpicked Bristol’s line-out. With a plentiful supply of possession, Leicester’s backs prospered, with former South Africa wing JP Pietersen scoring two tries in the first half, although the hard work for his second was done by Telusa Veainu, who splintered Bristol’s fragile defence with a brilliant counter-attack.
The last time Bristol played in Leicester – in April 2009 – they were trashed 73-3 in a match that was played at the city’s football ground when they had already been relegated. The margin of this defeat may have been smaller but the potential impact on a side struggling to avoid an immediate return to the Championship could be more significant.
“We spoke before we came here about physicality and accuracy but, for the first 20 minutes, we had neither,” said Bristol coach Mark Tainton.
“We turned too much ball over, we allowed them too much field position and, if we are not at 100 per cent against Premiership teams, we are going to struggle. We fell off tackles in the first half, we were high in tackles and we let them get line breaks, which meant they got the scoreboard ticking over. Pretty much by half-time the game was gone.”
Bristol could not be faulted for their effort but it proved a depressing return to Welford Road for three former Tigers – Jordan Crane, Will Hurrell and Rob Hawkins.