The east Midlands derby came at an appropriate time in the calendar. A fixture that has come to be associated with cards, yellow and red, yielded a sixth dismissal in four years when Dylan Hartley was ordered off for elbowing Matt Smith in the face. It is an encounter that never loses its heat no matter how cold the weather – and Northampton, never mind their captain’s loss of control, never melted.
Leicester set out to niggle the Premiership leaders, led by their hooker Tom Youngs who lingered at every breakdown he hit, testing the tolerance threshold not only of the referee but the Northampton players. He received a few shoves and digs but nothing like the punch he took during last May’s Premiership semi-final here which earned the home prop Salesi Ma’afu a red card.
Hartley, though, even at the age of 28, is not one for cheek turning. He received a yellow card during England’s autumn international series for dangerous use of the boot and dropped to the bench the following week for what proved to be a costly loss of discipline. Again it was his aversion to letting match officials enforce the rules that, 16 minutes into the match, led to the second red card of his career and a fifth date with a disciplinary panel.
When Hartley flopped over on the wrong side of a ruck five metres from his own line, Matt Smith came out of the line and cleared him out. Hartley was not preventing release and Smith’s opportunism had an element of the premeditated about it: he not only shoved Hartley back behind the Northampton line but kept hold of the forward and received an elbow in the face, immediately dropping to the ground as if he were a Premier League footballer.
The referee JP Doyle was minded to send Hartley to the sin-bin, even after watching a replay of the incident from several angles, but was persuaded to upgrade the sanction by the television match official Sean Davey, who had seen exactly the same footage. So much for the holder of the whistle being the sole judge of fact.
Whatever the debate over the colour of the card or whether the TMO had exceeded his brief, Hartley, as captain and a player who has missed nearly a year of rugby because of a lack of self-control, should have known better than to aim an elbow at an opponent’s face, no matter how provoked he felt.
Even if his latest suspension is not long enough to rule him out of the Six Nations, the England head coach, Stuart Lancaster, may call time in World Cup year on a player whose temperament remains suspect.
Leicester not only had a man advantage but they used the penalty that resulted from Hartley’s action to drive a scrum and were awarded a penalty try after Alex Waller dropped his elbow to the ground under pressure.
The Saints had more than an hour to survive with only 14 men, opting to sacrifice a back to keep their forward complement at eight, but for the remainder of the half they were comfortably on top, with two Stephen Myler penalties reducing the deficit to a point by the break.
Leicester were by then down to 14 men, temporarily, with Tom Croft in the sin-bin for a high tackle on Ken Pisi, a harsh decision that was based on Geoff Parling doing the same to Samu Manoa earlier, but they were being outplayed – with Northampton far sharper in possession through Kahn Fotuali’i, Myler, Luther Burrell, Pisi and George North creating space against a narrow defence through power and slick hands.
It was no surprise when Northampton took the lead five minutes after the restart when Waller received a pass from Ma’afu and sold a dummy, but with Myler receiving treatment under the concussion protocol, Jamie Wilson missed the conversion and Myler was wide with a penalty on 53 minutes.
Leicester were slumbering but suddenly roused themselves on the hour. Vereniki Goneva turned their first visit to Northampton’s 22 of the half into a try, but four minutes later the Saints were back in the lead through Ben Foden.
A tight game had become entertainingly loose and when Julian Salvi forced a turnover from Foden and Miles Benjamin shrugged off Phil Dowson’s tackle, Goneva’s second try and Freddie Burns’s conversion put the Tigers three points ahead with 10 minutes left.
Northampton did not panic. When they were awarded a penalty with four minutes to go, they went for victory, not the draw.
They kicked to touch, won the throw and when a driving maul stalled, Burrell again stormed the gainline, taking out three defenders, and the hands of Myler allowed Jamie Elliott to use North as a decoy and take his side to their first Premiership victory over Leicester in the regular season for more than four years to show how the power in the east Midlands has shifted.
