Match reaction: Leicester Tigers 36-17 Newcastle Falcons

Saturday 6 September 2014 – 3.00pm

Welford Road, Leicester

Aviva Premiership #1

 

Where better to begin married life than Leicester? That had been my first thought when the fixtures were published and had us at Welford Road today, but deciding it wouldn’t be fair to leave the in-laws and the lads to clear up a geet massive tent, the new Mrs Leipy and I gave today’s game a miss. There was also the potential for big exhaustion after a week full of hard work and a very emotional day yesterday, potential that was realised.

 

After a fair amount of work got done this morning and early afternoon, I managed to get two hours off to go home and listen to the commentary. Obviously the Falcons lost by what on the surface looks a decent margin, but in the first half we restricted Leicester to a few penalties and played some good attacking rugby, according to Smithy and Dean Gray. Simon Hammersley sounded quite involved and Sinoti Sinoti was lively.

 

I missed the start of the second half after falling asleep, probably the most exciting period of the match with a few tries scored. As often happens when you play top teams, when Leicester got their first couple of tries they got more, pulled away and got the bonus point Richard Cockerill will have been looking for. But we kept fighting and got a second try, so there’s positives there.

 

Losing 36-17 away at Leicester, two tries, holding out for more than a half, is not a disaster for a team that will make progress by finishing tenth this season. As I often say after games like this, far better teams than the Falcons will go to Leicester this season and lose by this much, or more.

 

One of the negatives today must be the early injury to Rob Vickers, which exposes our lack of depth at loosehead where many fans seem unconvinced by Eric Fry (I myself haven’t really formed much of an opinion so far). If the injury to Vickers is a lengthy one, you would think that the management will look to dip into the market if a decent player is available.

 

It will be interesting to read the thoughts of fans who went to Welford Road today on our apparent progression to a more attacking style, individuals’ performances (particularly Rogers and the fly-halves, and of course Alex Tuilagi) and the referee, who angered the BBC commentators and many on Twitter with what they saw as strange decisions. I’m going to guess though that Luke Pearce wasn’t actually named man of the match, and nor did he do a lap of honour.

 

So the season is underway and we are scoring tries. Last season we didn’t score a try in the Premiership until the fourth game, and had only two after five matches, so we can see that as an improvement. With London Irish also tipped by many pundits to struggle next season, next Sunday’s game on Kingston Park’s plastic pitch could be an interesting one.

 

 

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