Harlequins vs Leicester: Manu Tuilagi well off the pace to let Quins seal victory

Harlequins 25 Leicester 19

Leicester’s Manu Tuilagi breaks through the Harlequins back line on his return to action on Friday night (Rex Features)

Manu Tuilagi is miles off his game – the Leicester centre’s open-field spillage late in a tight contest led directly to Marland Yarde’s winning try for Harlequins – and while there was the odd glimpse of something undeniably powerful and more than a little dangerous amid the butterfingered fumbles and overthrown passes, the Midlanders’ rugby director Richard Cockerill is surely right in his suspicion that an England summons now would be counter-productive.

Tuilagi did contribute strongly to the substitute hooker Harry Thacker’s finish towards the end of the third quarter, running powerfully in the Quins 22 to add meaning to the build up. But there were too many handling errors, too many positional peculiarities and too many periods of anonymity for comfort. His second-half performance was an improvement on the first, but that was not saying a fat lot.

Leicester felt they had no choice but to reshape their midfield shortly before kick-off, demoting the occasional England outside-half Freddie Burns and centre Matt Smith to the bench because of lack of meaningful training time following smacks on the head the previous weekend, to be replaced by Oli Bryant for his first Premiership start and former Springbok captain Jean de Villiers.

Happily for the England coach Eddie Jones, the Midlanders’ hierarchy resisted the temptation to shift Tuilagi out of the No 12 position, where he seems to be of interest in red-rose terms, and into his more familiar role of outside centre. The human bowling ball quickly repaid the faith to a degree by smashing into Ben Botica from the get-go, but there was precious little else that merited any talk of an immediate Six Nations call-up.

The only time Leicester looked remotely dangerous in open field was when Telusa Veainu attempted to run in an interception down the left but he was hunted down by Quins full-back Ross Chisholm. The Londoners looked rather more threatening with ball in hand, the England squad wing Yarde catching the eye more than once with some hot steps off his right foot.

For all their adventure they had to settle for a penalty ding-dong, Botica cancelling out a hat-trick of penalties from Bryant with three of his own – two of them the direct consequence of Leicester’s failure to complete bog-standard exit routines from the restarts. When Botica nailed two more kicks in the minutes after the restart, Quins finally knew what it was to be ahead, with a little space in which to breathe.

It was not a feeling they enjoyed for long, thanks to Thacker, who was deployed as an emergency open-side flanker when Brendon O’Connor was forced off with a knee injury and made good on the gamble by battling hard in the loose exchanges. But Botica, outstanding from the tee, regained the advantage with a fine left-sided shot on 66 minutes and when Yarde ran in six minutes from time, he effortlessly added the extras from the right touchline to take his side out of range of Burns’ late penalty.

There was some late huffing and puffing from the Leicester pack, in which Marcos Ayerza and Tom Croft prospered mightily, but with Luke Wallace in the best of shape on the Quins open-side flank, the late pressure was successfully absorbed.

Scorers: Harlequins – Try Yarde; Conversion Botica; Penalties Botica 6. Leicester – Try Thacker; Conversion Burns; Penalties Bryant 3, Burns.

Harlequins: R Chisholm; M Yarde, W Stanley, H Sloan (M Hopper 69), T Visser; B Botica, T Tebaldi; M Lambert, D Ward (J Gray 56), A Jones (K Sinckler 56), J Horwill (capt), C Matthews (G Merrick 56), M Luamanu, L Wallace, N Easter.

Leicester: M Tait; P Betham, J De Villiers (M Smith 76), M Tuilagi, T Veainu; O Bryant (F Burns 50), S Harrison (J Kitto 72); M Ayerza, L Ghiraldini, F Balmain (L Mulipola 66), E Slater (capt), M Fitzgerald, T Croft, B O’Connor (H Thacker 35), L Pearce.

Referee: J P Doyle (London).