Falcons Fall Easy Prey To Sensational Tigers

Falcons Home Report
By Ian Birks
February 21 2005

Newcastle were embarrassed by a record score line at Welford Road as they collapsed to an 11 try victory by Leicester. A brace of tries was delivered by Smith, Back and Lloyd with Healey, Gibson, Tuilagi, Will Johnson, and Murphy piling on the pain as Leicester maintained a point a minute.

The first inkling of what was to come came from the kick-off when Leicester's pack secured the ball to drive into the heart of the visitor's forwards.
Goode converted his first penalty with just 3 minutes on the clock when Newcastle were caught off side to put Leicester into an early 3-0 lead. But Newcastle showed their resolve to come back at Leicester for the next 10 minutes or so.
Will Johnson came on for an injured Deacon after 4 minutes.
The result, a well worked try from one of the Falcon's stars of the day, Mayerhofler who crossed the line after a rare positional error from Gibson created just enough space for the try. May converted and after 12 minutes the score was 3-7 and it looked as though we had a game on our hands.
Possession for the visiting Falcons side was something of a rarity after their 11th minute try. Just on 20 minutes, Corry made a fine break in the mid-field, slipping the pass out of the tackle, Tigers swarmed through with some excellent interplay. Back was stopped inches from the try line but there was no stopping Healey as the Falcon's defences was found wanting for the first time during the match. Goode converted and the Tigers moved into a 10-7 lead.
Newcastle found it nearly impossible to gain possession, regardless of who restarted: they failed to collect from a Tigers kick-off while their own restart kicks were poor.
Defensively, Newcastle were, at best, naive. Tait's nightmare from his England debut was about to get worse as poor positional play created the gap for Smith get the first of his two tries of the afternoon. Again Goode converted the try: 17-7 after 28 minutes.
More pain for the Falcons was provided by Gibson just 2 minutes later and another converted try put the game beyond Newcastle's reach with only 30 minutes on the clock: Tigers 24 - Falcons 7.
Back was penalised for not rolling away to give Newcastle their last points of the day as May kicked the 3, but the first half was far from over as Ollie Smith ran in his second try of the half 2 minutes later with a tremendous break through the Falcons line as he picked up the pop-pass from Goode. The conversion, followed by a last minute penalty from Goode, took the score onto a unassailable 34-10 and a premiership 5-points already secured.
If the first half was bad for the visiting Newcastle players and travelling support, the second half was about to get much, much harder to endure. Smith was substituted as Welford Road saw the welcome return of Seru Rabini. At least the Tigers faithful were pleased to see his return!
A high tackle by Gross on Tuilagi gave Goode the chance to push Leicester into the corner with this penalty within the first minute of the restart.
The next 5 minutes saw tries from Lloyd and Tuilagi, both - you guessed it, converted by Goode put Tigers 48-10 ahead with only 46 minutes showing on the clock. Lloyd backed himself to power through some doubtful tackling by Tait and Tuilagi ran in 40 metres after Goode picked off a loose pass, again from Tait, and fed inside to a rampaging Tuilagi.
Rowntree and Lewis Moody replaced Tuilagi on 54 minutes.uter were replaced by Buckland and Rawson in the 51st minute. The first play after the restart saw Goode attempt to put Lloyd through for a carbon copy of the Smith try for England A against France, but referee Spreadbury declared Lloyd and/or Gibson to have been off-side.
With the hour mark looming, the Leicester forwards stepped up and tries from Back (55 minutes), Will Johnson (62 minutes) and a second from Neil Back (67 minutes) brought the score to 69-10, each try converted by Goode.
Both of Back's tries came straight from the training paddock as the Tigers forwards ploughed through the Falcons pack. Johnson scored a rare try after an initial break on the left flank by Vesty, the ball move inside to Will who ran in a full 15 metres.
The coaching staff then decided that it was time to make a few replacements and with 10 minutes of the game left to play Bemand and Vesty were replaced by Ellis and Murphy: seeing players of this calibre come off the bench must have been like a hammer blow to the already dejected Falcons team.
And so it continued with Murphy crossing the line with his first touch of the ball following a cross-field kick from Goode, and Lloyd getting his second try of the day after taking the pass from Gibson who made a terrific break, carving up the Falcons defence. Conversions from Goode took the score to an incredible 83-10.
As for young Matthew Tait, the spotlight fell on him yet again: at least two Leicester tries came from his poor positional play, a pass of his intercepted that lead to a Leicester try and weak tackling on Lloyd are all hard lessons learned for this precocious talent today in front of the Welford Road crowd . Undoubtedly one to watch for the future, but for now he is easily outshone by Ollie Smith who certainly did enough in the first half of this match to secure an England spot. As did Chuter, who gave a near faultless performance: move over Steve Thomson and lets see Titterall and Chuter as the first and second choice England hookers.
From Tiger's point of view, this was the best all round performance seen at Welford Road in a long while: the penalty count was low, errors were few and the interplay between forwards and backs was sound and is probably on a par with the Wasps HEC performances. It was one of those days when everything seemed to click into place for the home side. On this performance, Newcastle are not in the same class as Leicester; they are not even in the same school!
Having said that, it was not all bad news for Newcastle who had good performances from May, Mayerhofler, Stevenson, Flood and Wilkinson put in some useful kicks out of hand.
Man of the Match: so many to chose from; today was a true team effort, but on overall performance over the 80 minutes - Austin Healey!
Teams: Leicester: Vesty, Lloyd, Smith, Gibson, Healey, Goode, Bemand, Rowntree, Chuter, Johnson M, Deacon, Tuilagi, Back, Corry. Bench: Moody, Johnson W, Ellis, Murphy, Rabini, Buckland, Rawson Newcastle:Flood, May, Tait, Mayerhofler, Stephenson, Wilkinson, Grindal, Sititi, Harris, McCarthy, Parling, Gross, Ward, Thompson, Peel (c) Bench: Isaacson, Long, Hamilton, Dowson, Dickson, Walder, Phillips Referee: Tony Spreadbury. Scoring First Half
Time		Tigers	Falcons	Tigers Score	Falcons Score
3	Pen	Goode		3	0
11	Try		Mayerhofler	3	5
12	Conv		May	3	7
22	Try	Healey		8	7
22	Conv	Goode		10	7
27	Try	Smith		15	7
28	Conv	Goode		17	7
30	Try	Gibson		22	7
31	Conv	Goode		24	7
34	Pen		May	24	10
36	Try	Smith		29	10
37	Conv	Goode		31	10
40	Pen	Goode		34	10
Second Half
42	Try	Lloyd		39	10
43	Conv	Goode		41	10
45	Try	Tuilagi		46	10
46	Conv	Goode		48	10
55	Try	Back		53	10
56	Conv	Goode		55	10
62	Try	Johnson W		60	10
63	Conv	Goode		62	10
67	Try	Back		67	10
68	Conv	Goode		69	10
69	Try	Murphy		74	10
70	Conv	Goode		76	10
75	Try	Lloyd		81	10
76	Conv	Goode		83	10