Rob sparkles for Diamond

This win ended a miserable run of eight defeats – their worst sequence since 1975 – but Leicester handed Murphy the head coach’s job in the week.

Half of Murphy’s players were struck down with the likes of Manu Tuilagi in bed all day on Friday and Tigers shut up shop ahead of this game.

Jumped

Tuilagi got off his sick bed to score one try, there were two for Wales wing Jonah Holmes, one for Jonny May and Leicester jumped to sixth in the Premiership.

But Murphy feared the illness would cripple his team and make his reign as head honcho one of the shortest on record.

The Irishman said: “I did some things that I would not have imagined myself doing when the pressure was on. We actually cancelled training most of the back end of the week. Thankfully it paid off or it might have been the shortest head coaching role ever.

“Over half of the squad were affected and quite a few of the coaching staff and the medical staff so we shut up shop on Wednesday afternoon and did not do training.

“Guys like Manu were struggling, Gareth Owen, Matt Toomua, Ben Youngs, Ben White were affected. So we had quite a few people down.”

Quins were bullied by Leicester and called an emergency meeting straight after the match.

Boss Paul Gustard said: “We were definitely the second best team today. That was our worst performance by a long way. The players have locked themselves in the changing room and are talking about what we want to get right.”

A ninth defeat on the trot would have been Tigers’ worst run since 1947, but with Ellis Genge on fire they prevailed. The prop got the better of a DIRECTOR of rugby Steve Diamond said “negotiations are going well” as Sale pursue flyhalf Rob du Preez (left).

Du Preez, on loan from Super Rugby side Sharks, kicked 17 points as Sale moved to eighth.

“We will probably be making around 10 to 12 announcements in the new year of people who have signed and people who have re-signed, and Rob will hopefully be one of them,” he said. running battle with Kyle Sinckler in the scrum and there were plenty of verbals flying around between the two.

Winner

Ref Luke Pearce warned the pair and told them to cool it but there was only one winner in the scrap between the England duo on and off the scoreboard.

Holmes struck first when he was put away by George Ford and made it two when he made the most of hooker Tatafu Polota-nau’s 40m burst.

James Lang’s boot kept Quins in touch but Tuilagi got on the end of May’s long pass on 57 minutes. May got the bonus point score with 12 minutes left and Alex Dombrandt got one back for the visitors.

Sale 27 Bristol

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