Aviva Premiership round-up: Cockerill salutes his Tigers after five tries flatten flightless Falcons

It took just two minutes of the second half for Leicester to secure the four-try bonus point, setting up the catch-and-drive from which Thomas Waldrom rumbled over (Getty Images)

After his team's 42-15 win at home to Newcastle yesterday, Richard Cockerill, the Leicester director of rugby, said: “You have to take the result in context of the ambition of the opposition.”

Taken in the context of Newcastle being six points adrift at the bottom of the Aviva Premiership and looking towards an important home game against Harlequins on Friday, and the win having taken Leicester up to third, that would mean that a five-try, 40-point win should have been the least the Tigers expected.

That wasn't what Cockerill, being a wholly respectful sort –towards other hardworking rugby clubs, teams and coaches if not,occasionally, the authorities – meant to say. He added: "Newcastlerace to the line and make the breakdown quite hard, and I wasdelighted with how we coped with that. George Ford ran the showwell at fly-half, Billy Twelvetrees was strong in the centres andit is pleasing that we can play that well with so many back-lineplayers missing."

Twelvetrees, Niall Morris and Horacio Agulla scored one try eachfor Leicester and the No 8 Thomas Waldrom scored two. Ford, the19-year-old son of Newcastle's defence coach, Mike Ford, kickedfour conversions and three penalties. Jon Golding and RichardMayhew scored second-half tries for Newcastle and Jimmy Gopperthkicked a conversion and a penalty.

Newcastle's director of rugby, Gary Gold, said: "This was ourworst performance by a country mile and I am very disappointed bywhat I saw out there.

"When the penalty count is 12-4 against us and we have twoyellow cards to none from Leicester it is tough to take."

In the later kick-offs, Bath squeezed out a tremendouslyvaluable and, in terms of the result if not the number of triesscored, rather impressive 12-9 win at Exeter. Tom Heathcote kickedfour penalties to three by Ignacio Mieres to halt Exeter's recentupward mobility and arrest Bath's slide in the other direction.

There was a shock of sorts at Kingsholm too, where Gloucesterbeat Harlequins 27-23. Charlie Sharples, in the England squad butunable to get a game, scored the Cherry and Whites' first try andJonny May and Akapusi Qera scored numbers two and three. Thefull-back Ross Chisholm scored both Quins' tries; Freddie Burnskicked 12 points for Gloucester and Nick Evans kicked 13 forQuins.

The upshot of all that for the table is that Exeter have fallenback to seventh, Bath are eighth, Gloucester are nicely placed infifth and Quins are still first, despite now having lost threetimes.

There was also business yesterday in the Celtic league that isalso a bit Italian – Glasgow drew with Leinster 10-10 at Firhill,the South African prop Heinke van der Merwe scoring the onlyconventional try of the game – the Scottish "pro-team" beingawarded a penalty try – for the Irish province. As a result,Leinster are 11 points clear at the top of the RaboDirect Pro12 andGlasgow are fourth.

In the women's Six Nations' Championship match that was stagedat Twickenham after the men's game, England beat Wales 33-0. TheWasps wing Michaela Staniford scored two of England's six tries andthe Richmond lock Rowena Burfield was named player of the match.England, habitual champions, have won three games out of three andmust now beat France and Ireland for the Grand Slam.