Fortress Brentford
By HMRH
December 2 2020
The awaited game back in London saw Irish taking on one of the traditionally stronger, if somewhat faded, Premiership sides in Leicester Tigers.
Irish lined up for our London return with a strong front row full of international caps albeit with the new that British and Irish Lion Sean O’Brien had failed a late fitness test and was replaced by Jack Cooke. Leicester lined up with an all South African back row and a hideous blue away kit and the match was refereed by Karl Dickson.
The new stadium looks really good although it seems quite a small in goal area? Will have a better chance to view next Sunday for the Sale match so will save the stadium observations.
Leicester kicked off and the ball was fielded and cleared by Irish. Meehan looked to be caught by Wells as he cleared to touch, nothing like a lock forward standing on your foot and I wondered whether that was the start of Meehan’s discomfort. From the lineout Irish infringed, the first of far too many penalties, and Tigers kicked to touch. Nott stole the ball and Leicester gave away a penalty at the ruck. Thanks to Mr Dickson’s command of Akrikaans we gained an additional 10m following Liebenberg’s feedback.
Although Irish looked lively from the off, the first few minutes, and indeed the game, were littered with penalties from both sides. Henry landed the first score at the Brentford Community Stadium to hand Tigers a 0-3 lead.
At the first scrum Irish got the drive on, Tigers seemed to think Irish had an early engage but in the first half, at least, the Irish pack out scrummed the Tigers 8 and established themselves as the dominant set piece in the game.
Irish started to carry and to make inroads into Leicester territory and from a grubber the Leicester wing, Van Wyk, had a moment he will want to forget and deliberately slapped the ball out of play for an Irish penalty and a yellow card, OHC would have been clear but Tigers had cover. Irish went to touch to set up the maul but managed to knock the ball on from the line out under no pressure at all. All teams make these mistakes but I do feel that the inaccuracies cost us more than most as we don’t seem to create as many chances. From the scrum Irish shoved Tigers backwards to win another penalty and Jackson elected to kick for goal. Other teams may well have taken the lineout or scrum option but PJ stroked it over for a 6-3 score.
With Homer solid under the high ball Irish had most of the possession although the attack seemed narrow and we didn’t get the ball outside to the wings as often as we could.
Our try after 30 mins came from more forward pressure and Irish keeping ball in hand rather than kicking. Jackson took the ball behind the gain line and drew the tackle passing the ball to Meakes who ran straight causing Taute to angle in and creating space for Rona to take the pass and sprint through for the score. PJ converted to give Irish a 13-3 lead at the break.
Tigers made 2 changes at half time in their back row and at 10. Irish were forced to replace Meehan with Phipps and also replaced Kepu with Hoskins. Taufua brought some go forward to the Tigers back line and for the first time they really threatened our 22. Irish defended well, winning a turnover through Creevy but the ball carrier became isolated and Leicester won the penalty converting to make the score 13-6.
Creevy and Dell were replaced by Matu’u and Elrington on 48 minutes. At this stage Irish had 64% possession but had only really created 2 try scoring chances and as the pressure started to come on from Leicester the narrow lead didn’t look as though it would be enough.
Again Irish held out well in defence but this resulted in another penalty to Tigers which they kicked to bring the scores to 13-9. Irish stared to concede more penalties and not just at the scrum. Elrington was penalised for a no arm tackle which might easily have had a worse outcome as he was only a few inches below red card height. By now Irish had conceded 8 penalties in 17 minute and were very fortunate that they were not warned by Dickson until the 76th minute when it was far too late to make any difference. Under pressure we simply gave away far too many penalties. Leicester’s failure to find touch on at least 2 occasions was certainly very welcome.
After 24 minutes of Tigers’ pressure Irish won a penalty in the 64th minute with PJ adding another shortly after following a Mafi catch and maul to put us 19-9 ahead. Another Rona break almost resulted in a try for Phipps but from the 5m scrum Leicester pushed us back off the ball. Irish won another penalty at the last to win 22-9.
Great to win our first game in our new home with both Rona and PJ playing very well. The team and the coaches will know where we have to improve but I’ve seen us lose games like that before and our defence was good and well organised. Penalties remain a concern with very few being anything less than obvious. Heads up lads and onwards to Sunday with a score to settle with Sale after we were well beaten in Manchester last season. With players due back between now and Christmas we have reason to be optimistic in the pack. The forwards won the game for Irish and our 10,12 ,13 unit played well together in the backs.
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Keep up the good work
Regarding Meehan, he was kicked quite deliberately, cynically and late, at least twice. The officials were obviously ball watching, despite it being the touch judge's, or TMO's responsibility to spot such foul play.