Amidst a classic English rugby's greatest contests, this fixture between the Tigers and the visitors proved to be heavily influenced by the emotion during half-time than the rugby during play.
Martin Johnson led a phalanx of Tigers former players in honour of Lewis Moody, who has revealed his diagnosis with MND.
When Moody wore a Leicester shirt here, a decade and a half past, before moving to Bath for the last two years of a storied career, the home side remained still at the peak of their powers, while their opponents found themselves enduring a long drought without the title. The landscape has shifted dramatically since then. Bath arrived as champions, the first time they've held that status since the 1990s.
An Emotional Welcome on Home Turf
The Tigers, riding a powerful emotional surge, offered them an old-fashioned welcome, embracing the role of the unfancied team on their own pitch, the large home crowd further emboldened by Moody’s confession at half-time that, no matter where he may live, this famous ground remains his rugby home.
Looking back, Bath were always up against it. True to form, in a last-minute assault on the Bath line, Leicester won one last penalty from the tiring Bath defenders.
The Climax
Billy Searle, on for the impressive James O'Connor, the experienced Wallaby making his debut start for the club, took a quick tap, and Thomas du Toit made a high tackle, for which offence he saw yellow. From the final play, Searle landed the penalty from a difficult angle to snatch a dramatic victory.
It felt like being transported back to Lewis Moody's prime. Certainly, the home team, who moved up the table in the mid-table bun fight, will be heartened that their traditional, direct approach can still yield results, no matter the pedigree they face.
Contrasting Styles
The visitors were sublime when in possession. Therefore, 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 Bath kept Bath on the back foot, their pack thoroughly outplayed in the scrums and lineouts throughout the game.
Leicester’s three tries were carbon copies of each other, neither scored from more than a yard; Bath's three tries were works of art. Frost, Underhill, and Redpath were the finishers, before and after Ollie Cracknell’s try for Leicester. Subsequently, on the back of those penalties, Reffell and Smith forced their way over for tries just before and just after the break.
A Tense Finish
That earned Tigers a narrow advantage, an advantage they maintained for most of the second half. It seemed only a matter of time before Bath won enough ball to grab a fourth try. Actually, their breakthrough arrived via an infrequent penalty at the scrum, with their South African reinforcements now on the field. The fly-half, having missed two of his three earlier attempts, landed the kick inside the final ten minutes.
This merely galvanized Leicester for one last, brutish assault, initiated by the lively Ollie Hassell-Collins on the left wing. Having won the penalty that earned Bath the lead in a situation he relishes, the unfortunate prop gave away a penalty in a vulnerable position. The outcome was then a foregone conclusion.
