Leicester stunned by Bristol fightback

FORMER England star Mike Brown saw red as Bristol came back from the dead in quite sensational fashion to end stunned Leicester’s season.

Tigers were cruising to victory in front of a sell-out 25,849 crowd when replacement Francois van Wyk crossed to add to Ollie Hassell-Collins two earlier tries 15 minutes from time.

Dan McKellar’s team led 19-0 and Bristol were in grave danger of going from last week’s club record 85-point haul against Newcastle to failing to register a single point.

But Max Lahiff came off the bench to score and moments later Brown, sin-binned in the first half for backchat, was shown his second yellow card for a head-on-head collision.

With him went Leicester’s composure as former Tigers hooker Harry Thacker joined the game and ran rings around his old club in the dying stages.

From his first gallop Lahiff bagged a second try, then from his next Scottish No8 Magnus Bradbury ploughed over with 28 seconds remaining to allow AJ MacGinty to kick the winning conversion and leave Welford Road stunned.

‘I’m shattered, really disappointed,’ said McKellar. ‘I feel like I’ve been kicked in the guts. I am still finding hard to accept that we managed to find a way to lose that game.

‘I don’t want to put it all on Browny as I thought he was outstanding today, but back to back cards for one individual has hurt us.’

It was a catastrophic finish by England’s biggest club, extinguishing their play-off hopes just two years after they romped to Premiership glory under now England head coach Steve Borthwick.

Ultimately that failure to convert pressure into points came back to haunt them and it means Bristol, not them, remain in the play-off hunt.