It was a weekend when east Midlands rugby went west. Leicester followed Northampton’s humbling at home by Leinster the previous night with their heaviest defeat in the European Cup, accumulating players in the sin‑bin rather than points in a display of such incoherence and ineptitude that it could not be put down to the Anthony Foley factor.
On a day when Racing 92 lost at home against Glasgow, Munster took control of the group, albeit with three away matches to come, with their second bonus-point victory after wearing down Leicester in the first half with a series of high kicks, mainly from their scrum‑half Conor Murray. He had the advantage over his Lions rival Ben Youngs of playing behind a dominant pack and applied the knockout blow after the interval when the Tigers lost their shape and then their discipline.
The European Cup quarter-finalists last season were drawn from England and France, but Munster and Leinster have given notice that it is unlikely to be repeated. Leicester’s two previous worst defeats in the tournament came over the border in Belfast and they arrived on the back of five successive victories in all competitions having doubled Munster at this stage in Europe a year ago.
Munster had won all six matches since the untimely death of Foley, one of the provinces’s rugby icons, in October. If they were fuelled by emotion initially, here they were calculating and ruthlessly efficient, playing for possession initially, applying pressure and forcing mistakes. The back-rowers CJ Stander and Peter O’Mahony set the tone, all muscle and bustle, and the Tigers lacked anyone as physically imposing.
Murray fully exploited his pack’s dominance of the lineout and breakdown – long before the end they were shoving Leicester backwards in the scrum – weighting his kicks, which were invariably aimed at the Leicester left wing where Adam Thompstone and the full-back George Worth, making his first start in Europe, were hounded into errors by Darren Sweetnam.
Leicester were caught between their strategy of moving the ball and the need to get out of their own half and when they kicked they did so ineffectively. While Munster’s chase was strong, Simon Zebo was rarely challenged when catching the ball and the full-back was able to keep the pressure on the Tigers who, on the sunniest of December afternoons, found themselves locked in an ever tighter grip with no means of escape.
Other than a Stander break which Murray supported, Munster rarely threatened in the opening 30 minutes, wearing down their opponents with a series of body blows. Leicester were regularly penalised at the breakdown for trying to slow down the home side’s ball, and when Ed Slater took his time rolling away after making a tackle in his own 22 he was sent to the sin-bin.
Munster were then 12-0 up through four Tyler Bleyendaal penalties and with a man advantage they went for their opponents. A series of drives got them closer to the line before Murray fooled the defence by looking outside and passing inside to Zebo, who dodged past the wrong-footed Lachlan McCaffrey.
If Munster did not have the authority of old, they were relentless and persistent. Leicester tweaked their approach after the break but were no more successful at keeping hold of the ball. Manu Tuilagi, making his first start since the opening day of the season, touched the ball three times and his game finished in the sin-bin after showing his frustration by swinging his right arm as he joined a breakdown. He was fortunate the replacement Jean Kleyn ducked at the last moment so the blow glanced off the top of his head. If he had not, it would have caught him full in the face.
When Worth hauled down the Munster centre Jaco Taute as he chased a kick over Leicester’s line, he became his side’s third player to be sent to the sin-bin. His action was also punished with a penalty try, although whether Taute, who was looking for his hat-trick, would have reached the ball in time was more in the realms of the possible than the probable.
Taute’s first try came after a 20-metre driving maul from a lineout and his second followed a break by Sweetnam, whose job of kick chaser had by now been made redundant. He took out two defenders before freeing the centre, who is in his last few weeks with Munster on a short-term contract before returning to South Africa, with an inside offload.
The story of the match was summed up in the final minutes when Leicester’s replacement hooker, George McGuigan, drove to the Munster line in search of a consolation try. In his way was Stander, who held him up and stripped him of the ball, galling for a club that based its considerable success in years past on physical supremacy.
“We had our arses smacked,” Richard Cockerill, Leicester’s director of rugby, said. “We put ourselves under pressure by kicking poorly and inviting Munster, who won every bit of the physical contest, to run at us. We only have ourselves to blame. The performance was not acceptable. I hope we take nothing from this into the return when we have to salvage pride. The players will not need to be told that. We are not going to roll over and concede the pool.”
