Leicester have endured, by their own standards, an underwhelming season but they continue to operate on a need-to-win basis. Defeat to their new neighbours would have broken their perennial presence in the top four, but it never looked likely, even when they were reduced to 14 men after 36 minutes.
The Tigers, so lacking in teeth and ideas at Saracens a few weeks before, had too much wisdom for Wasps, who need to beat London Irish this weekend to qualify for the Champions Cup. It was a battle for fourth spot, a quarter-final as the Leicester captain Ben Youngs put it, and his side administered an old-fashioned knockout.
They could have done without the Fiji centre Seremaia Bai seeing and receiving red for charging into a ruck where the Wasps’ No8 Nathan Hughes was pinned and colliding with him head-on, but with their place in the top four in jeopardy, Leicester were in the mood from the start. The small matter of a one-man disadvantage added to the loss of Geoff Parling to a rib injury after he had returned to the field following a head injury assessment was not going to deflect them. Tom Youngs, whose yellow card at Saracens proved costly, was a giant among giants, starting the move for the first try and so ubiquitous that his brother Ben could have been his twin, and if Leicester repeat this form and focus in the play-off semi-final, it will take more than home advantage to topple them.
“It was our best performance of the season,” said Ben Youngs. “We have been inconsistent but, when it mattered, we showed what we are about. It was time to get it right: we have too many good players not to turn up. We have been a boxer on the ropes hanging in there this season. We have come out fighting in whatever round we are in now and this can be our springboard.”
Leicester’s director of rugby, Richard Cockerill, held his head in his hands after the final whistle, overcome by relief rather than joy. Defeat, and with it failure to reach the top four for the first time in 11 years, would have prompted speculation about his position.
Wasps, looking for the try that would have won them a game they never led in, summed up their performance by losing the ball in contact. “Everything about Cockers is Leicester and very rarely do you get a director of rugby or coach, like Geordan Murphy, who is that club through and through,” said Youngs. “It is everything they have ever known and you can see that passion, which is great. It ran through the players against Wasps and made the performance. It would have been easy when we went lost Seremaia to have reflected that we were a man down against a side that plays excellent rugby, but we did not want to be the first Leicester side since 2004 not to make the top four and we had the character to go with our belief.”Leicester did not quibble with the decision of the referee Wayne Barnes on review to dismiss Bai, having originally shown the centre a yellow card. They were ahead 18-9 at the time but Wasps never found a way out of the defensive straitjacket they were put in from the start and the more they struggled, the more stuck they became.
“It was your typical Leicester performance,” said the Wasps’ second row Joe Launchbury, who came on as a second-half replacement after six months out with a neck injury.“They beat us in a few areas and competed really hard at the breakdown.” When Launchbury was injured, Wasps were playing in Wycombe and he returned to a sell-out in Coventry.
“The last time I had a long injury was the season we were nearly relegated,” he said. “We have come along way since then and the club is really positive.
“Our aim since the start of the season has to be to finish in the top six and that makes London Irish on the weekend a big match for us. We have to use this defeat as motivation.”
Wasps Masi (Miller, 72); Wade, Daly, Leiua, Tagicakibau; Goode (Lozowski, 72), Simpson (Davies, 48); Mullan (McIntyre, 72), Festuccia (Lindsay, 66), Cittadini (Taylor, 72), Gaskell, Myall (Launchbury 52), Johnson, Haskell (capt), Hughes (Thompson, 72). Pens Goode 6, Lozowski.
Leicester Morris; Thompstone, Tait (Loamanu, 66), Bai, Goneva; Burns, B Youngs (capt; Harrison, 60); Mulipola (Ayerza, 48), T Youngs, Cole, Thorn (Slater, 60), Kitchener, Parling (Gibson, 28), Salvi, Crane. Tries Morris, Goneva, Thompstone. Con Burns. Pens Burns 3. Red card Bai 36
Referee W Barnes (Eng)
Attendance 32,019
