They looked as if they were cruising. They looked as if they had a bonus-point win as early as a couple of minutes before half-time. But, by the end, Leicester were mighty grateful just to emerge with the win.
When Ulster woke up, they woke up and then some. And there will be concerns that the Tigers’ injury horrors are not over – Manu Tuilagi did not survive beyond the first quarter of an hour, withdrawn with the recurrence of his groin injury that Leicester and England will monitor closely.
So, let’s be curmudgeonly and reserve judgment on Leicester’s revival for now, but this was more like it – a raucous house (albeit enlivened by a sizeable travelling support) and a big win over big rivals.
What won’t sit so comfortably in the final analysis, though, is the way Ulster tore the Tigers apart in the second half, with a quality of rugby that Leicester never quite matched for the 50 minutes when Ulster were poor. And they were very poor.
Still, Leicester were a Ben Youngs stud away from having the bonus point by half-time. It would have capped a golden 10 minutes in which their lead ballooned from 7-3 to 19-3 – 26-3 would have all but sealed their victory at that early stage. Leonardo Ghiraldini, accurate and hard in everything he did, thought he’d registered that fourth try, and the jubilance of his reaction suggested that the new signings from Italy are as caught up in the fight to turn around the Tigers’ season as anyone. Alas, for Ghiraldini and Leicester, Youngs had put his foot on the touchline as he spun the ball away from the latest assault on Ulster’s line.
Welford Road could not be too despondent, what with that burgeoning lead of theirs.
The first try came after quarter of an hour, when Owen Williams hit an aggressive line and went over amid a thicket of Ulster defenders. The referee chose to ask the TMO the “second question” – ie, placing the onus on him to disprove the score. There was no clear evidence either way, so what didn’t really look like a try ended up being awarded as one. And Leicester were on their way.
Youngs intercepted Paul Marshall’s pass when the Ulster scrum-half broke blind, and he sent the excellent Graham Kitchener over for the Tigers’ second. Freddie Burns missed the conversion horribly – as he had a simple penalty a few minutes earlier – but he made amends with the third almost immediately. Craig Gilroy became the latest to see yellow for mistiming a challenge under the high ball, and Burns ran blind from the attacking lineout, towards Gilroy’s wing, and ghosted inside the cover for the third. Needless to say, Williams was invited to convert, which he duly did.
He stretched the lead further early in the second half, but Ulster burst into life for the final half-hour. Tommy Bowe scored their first try, linking brilliantly with Jared Payne down the right, before Francois van der Merwe leapt over a ruck for the second after brilliant breaks by Payne and Gilroy.
Leicester survived the final 10 minutes, even making a half-convincing play for that bonus point with a few lineouts and drives. But Ulster saw off those comfortably enough before mounting one last assault themselves. It didn’t come off, and Leicester emerge with the most precious of wins.
