Bristol Seconds serve up Christmas cheer.

By Tiger Bud
December 24 2006

It certainly felt like pantomime season down at Welford Road on Frida night. The suspense of the fog blanketing one half of the pitch, multiple young Tiger heroes,

Bristol’s Mariano Sambucetti playing the villain and everyone’s favourite pantomime dame Tony Spreadbury overlooking proceedings and providing some mesmerising decisions along to way to keep the crowd entertained. Not only all of that, free mince pies were provided on the gates!

Unfortunately the Bristol players didn’t keep within the Christmas spirit and spent the first quarter of the half standing on any Leicester players they had within eye-shot, which dispelled any thoughts of the game being played without any passion. Bristol’s Mariano Sambucetti not even bothering to make his stamp on Louis Deacon look like in was even involved in rucking for the ball, seeing as the ruck was a good 5 metres in front. Amazingly, the touch judge actually saw the incident and the pantomime feeling returned with a chorus of boos around the ground as Sambucetti made his way to the sin-bin. After some early pressure from Bristol, it was the Tigers who made a dent on the scoreboard first with an Ian Humphreys penalty. Even though Leicester had the man advantage there didn’t seem any way through the Bristol defence, and even found them selves level on 29minutes.

It wasn’t until Sambucetti actually returned to the pitch Tigers made the elusive break-through. From a scrum near the half way line the ever impressive Humphreys took the ball on the loop and chipped over the Bristol defence for Shane Jennings to collect and score under the posts with Humphreys adding the converstion to make it 10-3 with 22 minutes gone. This started a purple patch for the Tigers as they stole Bristol line-outs, destroyed them in the scrum and it was only another three minutes until they broke the defence again, with Humphreys weaving through the holes in the Bristol defence to score. At this point Tigers were dominating with Crane, Abrahams, Jennings and Humphreys impressing and it wasn’t too long before they touched down again. Some excellent work from the pack found Crane at the bottom of a maul to claim Tigers third try. At this point the game seemed over, but it didn’t stop a mass brawl with Cornwell and Strange being sent to the bin. Bristol were lucky to even have 15 men on the field at that point as a high tackle on Dan Hipkiss by David Lemi could have easily been shown a straight red.

22-3 at half time showed Tigers dominance, and the appearance of Geordan Murphy and Paul Burke after half time couldn’t have helped Bristol’s confidence. Burke is certainly a different type of player to Humphreys, but his good vision lead to the bonus point score on 45 minutes. A neat grubber kick meant for Vesty, who was clinically taken off the ball, was collected by Varndell to score under the posts. More excellent work saw the ever-impressing Dan Hipkiss slide through the tiring Bristol defence to score only five minutes after Varndell touched down. At this point it looked as if Tigers would post a cricket score but Louis Deacons try in the 58th minute was the last time the home side would cross the line. Such was Tigers dominance that they could afford to substitute Tom Varndell for promising back-row player Tom Croft, who looked a little lost out on the left wing.

There was still time for two quick tries from Bristol, but they didn’t even manage to outscore the amount of times Julian White had to leave the field for attention for a nasty looking cut near his right eye. White has been heavily criticised for his part in the Autumn Internationals, but proved a major force in the scrum as well as open play. The day belonged to the young Tigers such as Crane, Abraham, Hipkiss, Jennings and Humphreys. With Pat promising a totally different 15 against Irish, this seasons squad could be our strongest ever yet. It feels a good time to be a Tiger.