Gloucester beat Tigers in Slater Cup thriller

Gallagher Premiership

Gloucester 38 (17)

Tries: Williams, Carreras, Clement, Harris, Blake Cons: Carreras (5) Pens: Carreras

Leicester 31 (21)

Leicester Tigers defeated Gloucester in a tight match at Kingsholm to move Gloucester up to third place in the Premiership.

Before Tomos Williams replied for Gloucester, Izaia Perese came out on top from a slip in the post, which Leicester had already won.

Leicester’s Mike Brown and Gloucester’s Santi Carreras exchanged further tries, before Tigers debutant Adam Radwan dotted down following an interception.

Harry Wells fired a quick header from short range to extend Leicester’s 21-17 half-time lead, but Jack Clement and centenarian Chris Harris responded to turn things around.

Before Handre Pollard’s penalty earned the away side a losing bonus point, Seb Blake’s effort extended the lead to Leicester.

It didn’t take long for the first score of the day to arrive with the potential for both teams to take second place in the table.

Following an unsuccessful drive from a five-metre lineout, Ben Youngs picked the perfect pass for Wallaby centre Perese, who went over untouched.

However, the Cherry and Whites quickly responded, with Seb Atkinson breaking a half-break between the Tigers’ defensemen before feeding Max Llewellyn for the visitors’ first try of the match.

Leicester again struck after an odd incident in which Llewellyn was fined for a wrong restart. A straightforward back-line move led to Mike Brown charging over from the ensuing scrum, leaving the Gloucester defensemen completely enraged.

George Skivington’s men thought they had levelled soon after. Christian Wade touched down in the corner for a fortuitous kick, only to be awarded the try for offside in the build-up.

However, Gloucester were not without their own prolongation. Before Carreras’ dazzling effort in the corner, the Tigers had repelled Clement’s drive after working their way into the 22-yard line.

On the edge of half-time, the match swung again. As Gloucester pressed, Brown defeated Gareth Anscombe. The former England fullback made it into Radwan’s first touch as a Tigers player before offloading to the right.

Wells forced his way over from short range after Ollie Hassell-Collins broke down the wing to give Leicester the lead into the second half.

However, Gloucester encountered a second wind. Before Harris, making his 100th appearance for the club, touched down to end a frantic period of play, Clement exploited a tiring Tigers defense and scored.

Before Blake emerged with the ball from the resultant lineout drive for Gloucester’s fifth try, things only got worse for Michael Cheika’s men when Perese was sent off for a risky tackle.

Leicester were shell-shocked, but came away with two losing bonus point following Pollard’s late penalty.

Gloucester director of rugby George Skivington to BBC Radio Gloucestershire:

“It’s a good feeling]being third in the table] – the boys have earned that, they had to earn it the hard way today.

In the first half, I felt we had a little clumsiness; I felt we had a little sexiness. We were very close to completely disengaging from Leicester.

The boys found their rhythm at the back end of the first half and into the second half, and I’m proud of them because it was so easy to fall into their shells today and they just kept cracking away.

Michael Cheika, the head coach of the Leicester Tigers, speaks with BBC Radio Leicester:

“I thought the result of last week’s tremendous improvement was disappointing, but I’m still disappointed,” he added. To be honest, I thought we deserved more than we did when we quit that game.

(On being asked what made the difference):” The penalty flow was pretty obvious, maybe someone said something the referee didn’t like, but it went against us from there and it went against us hard.

We needed to improve our kicking technique and be a little sharper in the lineout, but we didn’t get any territory because we were constantly being penalized.

Replacements: Singleton, Rapava-Ruskin, Knight, Clarke, Tuisue, Englefield, Atkinson, Hathaway.

Leicester: Brown, Radwan, Perese, Kata, Hassell-Collins, Pollard, Youngs, Smith, Montoya, Cole, Henderson, Wells, Liebenberg, Reffell, Cracknell.

Replacements: Clare, Cronin, Hurd, Joussain, Ilione, Whiteley, Woodward, Volavola.

Yellow card: Perese