Losing Ugly
By Griff
October 11 2021
Bright sunshine bathed the Brentford Community Stadium as London Irish hosted high flying Leicester Tigers on Saturday. The visitors had made a dream start to their season while Irish had failed to convert some good play into results. The sensible money (and certainly my expectations) was on a hefty defeat for the Exiles but there's always hope.
London Irish's three league games this term have begun with their opposition being allowed to score heavily early on followed by a monumental effort to get back into the game. Two narrow defeats and a stunning draw could all have been victories and so it gave the home support a lot of hope to see over twenty minutes pass without score from the visitors. Sadly it was also scoreless from Irish but expectations of a drubbing were beginning to evaporate as Irish defence held solid and a few forays made good ground.
The first score came for Leicester, though, when an Irish scrum was penalised for collapsing just outside their own 22 even though the ball had already been picked up by Tuisue at 8, passed to Phipps at 9 and was in the air to the next receiver. It seemed a really harsh penalty and the annoyance was compounded when Tigers kicked to the corner and threw the subsequent line-out so askew that the catcher struggled to control it with his outside hand. The rolling maul was controlled well and the Exiles failed to stop the drive so the try was a good one but I certainly felt that the opportunity was rather gifted to Leicester by the referee. The wide kick was missed by George Ford.
The home side seemed as irritated by the score as I was and more attacks were launched and gained ground. Irish were pushing hard to get parity and were stopped, a few times, by Tigers infringements. Over the remainder of the half Irish chose to kick two of these and went in at the break 6 - 5 in the lead. Crucially, for context later on, one of the infringements was deemed a knock-on when a Tigers tackler punched the ball forward as it left an Irish hand. It seemed an obvious deliberate knock-on but sir had a look with the TMO and decided it was definitely accidental.
It was good to be in front but the lack of a try was a niggling doubt. Irish were making the yards but, in a change from recent games were failing to cross the whiewash.
The second half began with a similar pattern of play, Irish were making in-roads but failing to cross and Tigers were defending well, sometimes legally and sometimes not. Paddy Jackson took the opportunity to take a further 3 points from a penalty.
Tigers soon responded, grinding their way into the Irish half and, from a close-range line-out mauling their way over the line. Ford took the extras and gave the visitors a 9 - 12 lead.
More pressure from the Exiles finally paid off. Five minutes after the second Tigers try Gus Creevy peeled from a maul and crashed over for a well-deserved score - the Argentinian was involved in everything good up to that point. Jackson add the conversion and gave the home side another lead.
Personnel changes hard started now and came thick and fast for both sides and both teams seemed to lose a bit of cohesion, this was more marked for Irish though and the penalty count climbed. Ford kicked a further three penalties to take his side ahead and win the game 16 - 21.
One of these, however, was a a fascinating study in refereeing consistency. Paddy Jackson went in to make a tackle and one of his hands was judged to push the ball forward. An obvious knock-on but given the handling of a virtually identical case in the first half you'd be surprised to see it called a penalty. Obviously it was judged deliberate. As a one-eyed fan I'll quite cheerfully admit I have a massive bias to my team but when you see two so similar instances in a game and one is called one way and the other differently you start to wonder if officials really are against you.
So another loss for Irish and another win for Tigers but, along with the Exiles other league games, it could easily have been the other way round. Irish are so close to a win but you feel until they get one they'll always have the self-doubt and nerves that force poor decision making.
One of the things I've deliberately left out here is the incessant kick-tennis from both sides. It was a rarity for either side to run the ball from their own half opting to simply hoist yet another kick to their opposition and hope they'd mess it up. It worked for Tigers as they rarely made a mistake with the high-ball, it very much didn't for Irish with a number of catches missed or knocked-forward giving their opponents a big territory gain. You have to wonder whether anyone in the coaching team has actually given any thought to what we should do when it's not working (and I'm not sure it ever has for us).
With Gloucester coming next Sunday on the back of finding a bit of form you have to hope someone will have a crack at that this week.
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You did miss out the penalty that was kicked crossfield to where it looked like we'd managed to create an overlap, but was then called back for an offside against the player who caught the crossfield kick. Small margins really cost us there as a try then would have given us a bit of breathing space.
