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Leicester-Bath this may have been, the great rivalry of English rugby, courtesy of their pre-eminence either side of the turn of the millennium, but there was as much for rugby connoisseurs to savour at half-time on the Welford Road turf as there was during the actual match. Martin Johnson led a phalanx of Leicester old boys in honour of Lewis Moody, who has announced his diagnosis with motor neurone disease.
“I thought today’s game was a great advert for how we get behind our own,” said Geoff Parling, Leicester’s head coach. “Not just Lewis, but Ed Slater too. I was at Newcastle when Doddie [Weir] was there. When something happens to one of ours, the whole rugby community gets behind them.”
When Moody last pulled on a Leicester shirt here, 15 years ago, before moving to Bath, where he still lives, for the last two years of a storied career, Leicester were still pre-eminent, while Bath found themselves in a long drought without the title they had come to know so well. Times have changed since. The Tigers’ great rivals arrived as champions, the first time they have called themselves that since the 1990s.
Leicester, on a wave of emotion, offered them an old-fashioned welcome, relishing their status as underdogs on their own pitch, the 18,000 Midlanders further emboldened by Moody’s confession at half-time that, no matter where he may lay his hat, Welford Road will always be his rugby home. In retrospect, Bath did not stand a chance.
Sure enough, in a last-minute assault on the Bath line, the Tigers managed to coax one final penalty out of the defence to inflict a first defeat of the season on their visitors. Billy Searle, on for the excellent James O’Connor, darted blind, and Thomas du Toit caught him high, for which offence he saw yellow. With the last kick of the game, Searle landed the penalty on an angle to steal the win.
We might as well have been back in the days of Moody’s pomp. Certainly, Leicester, who climb a little higher in the mid-table bun fight, will be heartened that a familiar frontal assault can still yield results, no matter the pedigree of the opponent. Bath were a different class when in possession. So Leicester, after a bewildering first half-hour in which they fell 17-7 behind, learned to deprive them of any. A deluge of penalties against kept Bath on the back foot, their forwards comprehensively bested at the set piece for most of the match.
Leicester’s three tries were carbon copies, none scored from more than a yard; Bath’s three were studies in poetry. The pick was Cameron Redpath’s, their third, in the 25th minute. At that point, Finn Russell and his mates had the ball on a string. Bath’s new toy at full-back, Santi Carreras, was looking a million dollars. His chip had set up their first, for Dan Frost in the third minute, and his step and offload sparked the second, for Sam Underhill in the 13th.
Olly Cracknell muscled his way over round the fringes of a lineout and drive between those two tries, but Russell and Redpath combined in their own half to send Henry Arundell, who shaded the battle of the fleet of foot against Adam Radwan, streaking clear down the left. He turned the ball back inside to Redpath, who sold an imperious dummy to Freddie Steward, and Welford Road fell quiet.
Over to the whistle of the referee to stir them up again. In the dizzying blur of penalties that followed, Leicester scored tries from driven lineouts either side of half-time, the final yards completed by Tommy Reffell and Nicky Smith. Pretty it was not, but there are no pictures on the scoresheet.
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That earned Tigers the lead, which they held for most of the second half. It seemed only a matter of time before Bath won enough ball to score their fourth. Actually, their breakthrough came with a rare penalty at the scrum, their South Africans by then on, either side of Tom Dunn, the hooker also on, for his 250th appearance. Russell, having missed two of his three attempts to convert, landed the kick with a little less than 10 minutes to play.
That only inspired Leicester for one last, brutish assault, set up by the lively Ollie Hassell-Collins down the left. Having won the penalty that earned Bath the lead where he is most comfortable, poor Du Toit conceded where he is not.
Moodos, Johnno et al would have enjoyed it. Rugby is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but the ability to lose oneself in the moment is a precious gift.
