The Times - UK (2021-12-06)

56 Monday December 6 2021 | the times

SportGallagher Premiership

5

ing the away side would have to score

from their own 22 to win the game. But

Quins could not come back and Wel-

ford Road roared at the final whistle.

“There has been a period here where

Leicester games were not perceived

from the outside to be big games — or

they were big games for the wrong rea-

sons,” Borthwick said. “The players

have worked incredibly hard to lift this

team from where it was and the crowds

have gradually been increasing. Hope-

fully they are proud of what the team is

doing right now.”

Scorers: Leicester Tigers: Try Potter (42min).

Pens Ford (7, 24, 33). Con Ford. Harlequins: Tries

Lynagh (62). Pens Smith (12, 17, 55).

Leicester F Steward; H Potter, M Moroni, D Kelly,

N Nadolo (G Porter 67min); G Ford, B Youngs

(R Wigglesworth 55); E Genge (N Leatigaga 73),

J Montoya, D Cole (J Heyes 68), H Wells, C Green,

H Liebenberg (O Chessum 44), M van Staden,

J Wiese (sin-bin 35-45; T Reffell 61).

Harlequins T Green; L Lynagh (O Beard 69),

H Jones, A Esterhuizen, C Murley; M Smith (sin-

bin 32-42), D Care; J Marler, J Walker, W Collier

(S Kerrod 73), D Lamb, S Lewies, J Chisholm

(V Taulani 69), J Kenningham, A Dombrandt.

Referee Ian Tempest (RFU). Attendance 24,202.

Youngs and

Ford deliver

a masterclass

0

2

Alex Lowe Rugby Correspondent

1

Leicester Tigers

Harlequins

16

14

How they stand

P W D L F A B Pts

Leicester 9 9 0 0 279 150 5 41

Saracens 9 6 1 2 305 165 6 32

Northampton960 3277225630

Harlequins 9 5 0 4 247 201 9 29

Exeter 10 6 0 4 229 195 4 28

Gloucester 9 5 1 3 239 226 6 28

L Irish 10 3 3 4 282 276 8 26

Newcastle 9 4 1 4 174 205 2 20

Wasps 9 3 0 6 229 239 7 19

Worcester 10 3 1 6 194 342 5 19

Sale 9 3 1 5 195 207 3 17

Bristol 9 3 0 6 173 256 2 14

Bath 900 9 1612974 4

Potter gathers the ball after fine work from Ford and Youngs to score Leicester’s decisive try en route to a ninth league win

DAVID DAVIES/PA

I

t is no surprise that in Ronan

O’Gara and Paul O’Connell,

Ireland have produced two of the

world’s new wave of young

coaches. O’Gara, the former

Munster and Ireland fly half, in

particular has established himself at

La Rochelle after mastering his trade

in New Zealand with Crusaders.

It is no surprise because they

played for Munster, caricatured this

side of the Irish Sea as a team driven

to European greatness by pure

passion. There was plenty of emotion,

yes, but there was even more rugby

intelligence. The calculating brain of

O’Gara steered his side to the parts of

the pitch in which they needed to be.

Stuart Barnes

The Gallagher Premiership is in rude

health and the message is getting

through. BT Sport enjoyed a spike in

viewers at the weekend; Gloucester and

Exeter Chiefs were both sold out and

Welford Road, for so many years the

graveyard of a fallen giant, was vibrant

once again, packed to the rafters for the

first time since April 2018.

They came in their hordes on a

wintry afternoon to witness Leicester

Tigers edge out Harlequins to secure a

ninth consecutive victory and their

position as the league’s Christmas No 1,

nine points clear of Saracens.

At the heart of this victory were Ben

Youngs and George Ford, two half

backs with a point to prove for different

reasons. They combined beautifully to

create the try for Harry Potter that

opened up a 16-6 lead for Leicester

early in the second half and controlled

a tight game, with Youngs making a

couple of rapier-like breaks that rolled

back the years.

On his first, he sent Marcus Smith

tumbling to the turf with a fend-off to

the face; a statement that Leicester

were not prepared to allow England’s

new fly half to dictate terms.

Smith and Harlequins did their best

to conjure a route back into the game

and Louis Lynagh scored a blistering

try after chasing down his own grubber

kick to make it 16-14, but the difficult

conversion was missed and the Tigers

closed out the game, helped by some

rigorous defence and Dan Kelly, the

centre, winning a critical turnover.

Ford was playing his first Leicester

game since announcing his decision to

leave the club for Sale Sharks at the end

of this season. He needed to demon-

strate to the home faithful that his heart

was still in the fight for the rest of this

campaign and he did so masterfully.

This was Ford’s kind of game: a battle of

strategy and pressure, and he excelled.

Alongside him was Youngs, who has

reacted positively to the pressure com-

ing from the next generation of scrum

halves, both at Leicester in the shape of

Jack van Poortvliet and with England,

where Harry Randall, Raffi Quirke and

Alex Mitchell are snapping at his heels.

“Ben looked really sharp,” Steve

Borthwick, Leicester’s head coach, said.

“He has made a plan and I have seen

him go up another gear. For a player

who has 112 caps to come in and say, ‘I

want to take it up to another level of

intensity,’ that is incredible.

“George adapted how we played after

that first quarter. That is the sign of the

quality — a player on the field able to

recognise what needed to be done and

be able to do it, that’s class. George

made that decision so we will maximise

everything we can this season — that is

our intention, anyway.

Famed for the glamorous rugby that

carried them to the title last season,

Harlequins proved there is a steel about

them too, which kept them in the fight

right to the death. They left proud of

that effort and with a losing bonus point

but also full of regret at the missed

opportunities, including two at either

end of the first half that could have

changed the course of the game.

Five minutes in, Smith kicked a pen-

alty into the corner, Harlequins

secured clean lineout ball and Danny

Care slipped an inside pass to Alex

Dombrandt, but the No 8 ran into the

referee. Leicester stole the next lineout.

Chance gone.

Shortly before the interval, Harle-

quins were back in the red zone. Both

teams had a player in the sin-bin: Smith

was shown a yellow card for slapping

the ball out of Youngs’s hands when

Harlequins were under the pump, and

Jasper Wiese soon followed for Leices-

ter for a no-arms tackle.

After Lynagh stopped just short of

the tryline, the ball was transferred to

Huw Jones, who had a two-man over-

lap. One pass would have secured the

try but the centre went himself and was

held up by a brilliant tackle from Potter.

Leicester led 9-6 at the interval. It

had been a nip-and-tuck affair. The

heavens opened when the sides

returned to the field and the half began

with a passage of play that went unbro-

ken for more than two minutes, both

teams probing for field position.

Ford then injected a change of pace.

He identified Lynagh was isolated

down the Leicester left, drew the Harle-

quins wing and released Youngs, who

executed on the run an exquisite kick

with the outside of his right boot that

Potter chased in for the try. “That was a

critical period,” Borthwick said.

Harlequins edged closer with a pen-

alty and then finally outflanked the

Leicester defence with an attack that

began with a stolen lineout near half-

way. The pace of Smith’s pass to Tyrone

Green created the opportunity and

Lynagh dropped the ball on to his boot

in a split second, chasing the kick to

score. Aware of Harlequins’ capacity to

score from anywhere, Ford controlled

the territory in the final quarter, ensur-

London Irish have Kidney hallmark: independent brains

O’Gara was taught every step of the

way, from his school days to Munster

and the national team, by Declan

Kidney. O’Gara, and O’Connell, may

not be aware of the Kidney influence.

He was never touted as a British &

Irish Lions head coach. He kept his

thoughts to himself. He encouraged

his players to think for themselves —

a coach who prompts and probes his

players for answers as opposed to

those who deliver all-knowing

lectures on a Monday morning.

So it was no surprise to see London

Irish playing it so smart in their 43-21

defeat of Newcastle Falcons on

Saturday, in a performance

paradoxically as far from Kidney’s

Munster as can be imagined. Munster

mastered the art of slowing down the

breakdown to such an extent that

World Rugby had to change the laws

of the game after one especially ugly

final victory against Toulouse.

Munster worked on their strengths

and played ruthlessly to them. Wind

the clock forward to 2021 and Kidney,

as the director of rugby at Irish, is

doing the opposite. Instead of slowing

opposing ball, Irish are producing

quicker phase ball than any team in

the Gallagher Premiership. Instead of

negating opposition, they are putting

together some of the most positive

rugby in the league.

There are myriad ways to play and

coach. The best coaches do not have

one way of approaching the game but

their squad must be competent at

thinking for themselves.

An example came in the 43rd

minute of their latest win. The Exiles

had a seemingly comfortable 14-point

advantage — the sort of margin that

would encourage most teams to kick

to the corner and go for the catch-

and drive score. However, Paddy

Jackson drilled the ball through the

posts. There is a world of

psychological difference between 14

points and 17 points. That is

scoreboard pressure

South Africa are exceptional

exponents of the craft but teams such

as New Zealand and England have

famously muffed their lines. The

Ireland grand-slam team of 2009 and

the great Munster sides calibrated

what was required without having to

look to the stands for the answers.

Here is another team with Kidney

directing from afar, another team

aware how the scoreboard works.

In an age where the preordained

planning of management is finalised

leading up to a fixture, Kidney

displayed a rare moment of

managerial thinking off the cuff. In

the 62nd minute, Irish made a mass

of substitutions. Four names flashed

up, including the Argentine hooker

Agustín Creevy. Irish were advancing

to a lineout five metres from the

Falcons tryline. The name flashed up

but the hooker stayed on.

So often we witness hookers

coming on to the pitch — irrelevant

of position and situation. Five metres

from either tryline is not the place to

throw a fresh pair of hands into the

fray. Irish delayed, Creevy threw to

the tail and two minutes after the late

change of plan, he crossed for a try.

Whereas Kidney’s Munster were

the masters of closing down a game,

his latest project are opening it up in

a way that was anathema to Munster.

Kidney does not grab column inches.

Rather the players fix their own

jigsaw on the field.

This Kidney vintage are

diametrically opposed to the old

Munster, yet their capacity to

combine fast breakdown with slick

half backs, gainline-crossing centres

and a counterattack designed for

broken fields looks as easy, and as

obvious as those days when Kidney

was the quiet king of Thomond Park.

Creevy stayed on

for a key moment

and scored a try