Tigers tails between their legs

By David Hibell
December 30 2005

In the old days, before professionalism came in, matches against Leicester were unusual in that both teams had letters instead of numbers, though they did things differently at the Mem. They upset the applecart again yesterday with a fine victory that should have been by more.

After an initial well controlled rolling maul from the Leicester forwards Bristol got back into the game and refused to take a backwards step. They stuck to their game plan of playing in Leicester territory and not trying to force the game and harried Leicester out of the match.

Strange scored five first half penalties whilst the Tigers fly half was off target with a relatively simple kick. The Leicester half backs struggled with kicking throughout the game with several penalty kicks missing touch.

Just as Bristol had identified that ex Colstons schoolboy Tom Varndell was a danger man Leicester were tracking David Lemi closer than Norad had followed Santa Clause, and not always legally, a barge into touch after he had chipped ahead going unpunished.

Bristol ended the first half with an extended period of intense pressure battering away at the Tigers line, but the Leicester defence held firm, David Hilton being denied a try as he was adjudged to have been held up.

Leicester have come back from being behind before and scored early in the second half to be 12 points behind and set up a grandstand finish. But they were never able to put a pattern on the game, although the second half was more even Bristol still shaded it and spent longer in opposition territory than Leicester.

Strange missed a couple of penalties to stretch the lead and the decision was made to go for line outs later on in the mnatch instead of taking the three points to go two scores clear.

In the end the vocal Bristol crowd, a record for a premiership match at the Memorial ground, were treated to third successive home league win to round off the year in fine style.