A Tale Of Two Halves

By Andrew Pickard
March 9 2007

Tigers entered the arena to the usual strains of “Let Me Entertain You” and for the 2nd week running we wondered whether they would. The answer, at least for the 1st half, was no.

Within a minute Tigers had given away the first penalty of the afternoon which Jarvis duly converted. Not long after saw the start of some of the most farcical play ever seen at Welford road; after complaints the previous week at Hickie being unable to hit his man more than 60% of the time, Cabbage decided that that was too high a percentage and decided to throw missiles over everybody’s heads.

And so the pattern was set for the 1st half; tigers occasionally getting their hands on the ball and Goode putting in long touch finders, for Quins to work back to our corners where we would dish the ball back up to them. This led to the one highlight of the 1st half when Quins caught another of our lineout unimpeded 5ms out and somehow failed to score.

So after a 1st half in which Quins dominated territory and possession Tigers somehow managed to take a 9-6 lead into the break.

During the break Abraham and Buckland were replaced by Corry and Chuter. They and the half time bollocking made an immediate impact as Tigers came out ready to give multi-coloured ones a bloody nose. 2 minutes into the half and Luscombe was the 1st to depart with said bloody nose.

A couple of minutes and several forward drives later Rabeni stretched for the line and the TMO confirmed he had reached it (just!), Goode missed the difficult conversion, his one failure of the afternoon.

Shortly after that Strettle departed with a dead leg, a real loss for Quins as the few times he received the ball he looked a real threat.

Turner-Hall on for the bloodied Luscombe then danced through some woeful tigers tackling and touched down, Jarvis slotting the extras, Quins right back in the game.

Luscombe returned to the field for Deane and probably wished he had sat on the bench for a few minutes longer, when he felt the power of Alex’s hand off as Tuilagi went on a diagonal run across the field. From the ensuing ruck, Dan Hipkiss went on a dancing run of 15m or so to score tigers 2nd try, Goode back on target with the conversion.

This time tigers decided not to go to sleep after scoring and continued to apply the pressure. Tigers got within a few feet of the line when Brown decided that he would prevent Tigers getting any closer by stretching out of the ruck to knock the ball out of Murphy’s hands, in doing so he earned himself a 10 minute break. This seemed to galvanise Quins and after Andy slotted the penalty they dominated the subsequent 10 minutes, scoring a penalty of their own.

After that both sides tried hard, but only had a couple of penalties to show for it.

So after 5 poor halves, tigers remembered how to play rugby. They’ll have to improve further if they are to beat Gloucester next up, but hopefully this was the corner being turned.

Moment of the match a ball boy throwing the ball on for a scrum and it going in straighter than most scrum halves manage from 10 yards closer.