Leicester v Bath
5th October 2002

Leicester Tigers maintained their winning ways at Welford Road and yesterday marked their fiftieth consecutive league victory at the ground. Bath though made them work for it.

For much of the first half Leicester looked like a team under pressure. Nerves were apparent and they made a series of elementary errors. Bath on the other hand looked composed from the outset. Captain Danny Grewcock said afterwards: “It’s the best start we’ve had.”

Again the first points went to Bath, through the reliable boot of Olly Barkley. In the first five games of this season, he has been the premiership’s most accurate goal kicker with an 88% record. Bath were awarded the penalty when Leicester lock Louis Deacon went over the top in the ruck.

The Tigers’ first realistic chance at points came 8 minutes later when Bath conceded a penalty for crossing. They opted to kick for the corner rather than go for goal, and as it was, the gamble didn’t pay off; they conceded another penalty to Bath, again for going over the top.

On 16 minutes, Tim Stimpson had his first shot at goal. Certain points it seemed, from 30 metres in front of the posts. Somehow though, Stimpson managed to pull it to the left and the Tigers remained without a score.

Freddie Tuilagi could have been their first chance at points but for a wayward pass from Martin Corry who evidently thought they had Mr Thin Air playing on the wing to take the pass.

Austin Healey, playing at fly-half, kicked away a lot of Leicester possession because he was forced to; Bath were not allowing Leicester to break their line. His frustration told early and he started spoiling for a fight. With anyone that was interested it appeared, and fortunately today Bath did not take the bait.

Barkley took another three points after the Leicester scrum was infringing in the front row.

Leon Lloyd’s confidence all seemed to have gone to wearing his silver boots, and he didn’t have enough left to back himself to making the line. Instead he wasted what was one of their best chances of the half for crossing with Lewis Moody.

Things by this time were beginning to get desperate for the home side; the crowd were getting restless and with half time approaching, Leicester still had no points at all. Healey tried a drop goal but, like Stimpson’s first shot, the ball sailed past the left upright.

On 40 minutes, Stimpson had his second shot. Again it looked like a sure-fire three points but he overcorrected and put it wide to the right. This was not looking like the record premiership points scorer.

Just on half time, Leicester scored in the corner from what appeared to have been a Bath error. Corry was on hand to capitalise and the home team was spared the red-faced walk back to the changing rooms. Stimpson missed again so at half time the scores were 5-6.

He returned to form after the interval with a monster kick from inside his own half soon after play restarted.

Leicester had taken heed of the half time talk and had returned to trying to drive the ball rather than run it. Bath were under sustained pressure for some time and eventually crumbled allowing Dorian West to push over for Leicester’s second try of the afternoon.

The game was beginning to see a little friction creep in between the two teams. Franck Tournaire had gone off for blood and come back on again, only to leave the field again with another wound.

25 minutes in and Bath again found themselves a man short. This week, Mike Catt was the guilty party for an incident with Martin Johnson. Chris Malone came on to cover for him at the expense of Nathan Thomas who was replaced by Andy Lloyd when Catt rejoined play ten minutes later.

In that time however, Neil Back had made the most of the numbers advantage and had scored Leicester’s third.

With three minutes left and the scores at 22-6, it looked like Bath had lost their chance of taking home a deserved bonus point. For years it has been a Leicester trait that you don’t stop playing until the whistle goes. Not this game though. They haven’t been playing to the same rules yet this season and lost concentration at the end. A good job then that the Bath players were still going and both centres, Kevin Maggs and Mike Tindall, were able to score tries of their own in the dying minutes.

Healey finally succeeded in getting his man sin-binned, James Scaysbrook the unfortunate party who hadn’t looked to be involved at all. Whether Healey had banked on joining him on the sideline is another question.

As it happened, there was not enough time for either side to feel their loss, or for Bath to scrape another penalty and the chance to win the game. Still, as Grewcock points out: “There are not many teams who come here and get as close as we got.”

“The team is improving each week and they battled well today. The finish was fantastic.”

They have two weeks away from the league now against GRAN Parma in the Parker Pen Challenge Cup, and two more weeks to continue improving as a side.

The final score in front of 16,811 crowd, a record for a league fixture, was 22-20.

Rowen Whittle