Leicester Tigers vs Munster match report: Owen Williams holds his nerve to exorcise demons of Thomond Park loss
Leicester Tigers 18 Munster 16: A last-minute penalty from Leicester's fly-half secured an impressive win for Tigers a week after being thrashed 38-0 by the same opposition
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Your support makes all the difference.Leicester fly-half Owen Williams struck a magnificent 52-metre penalty from inside his own half in the last minute of this Pool One thriller at Welford Road to keep his side’s hopes alive in the European Champions Cup.
A try by hooker Niall Scannell converted by Williams’ opposite number Tyler Bleyendaal had given Munster the lead with three minutes to play but a final penalty chance in a full-on scrap of three yellow cards gave Williams the chance to avenge last week’s 38-0 horror show suffered by Leicester in the reverse fixture in Limerick.
“Last week was a bit of a blip,” said Williams. “For the kick at the end, I concentrated on a vision of the ball going through, and that’s what happened.”
Leicester will probably need to win their remaining pool matches against Racing 92 away and Glasgow at home in January to have any chance of reaching the quarter-finals but at the end of a week of rumour swirling around the job prospects of their director of rugby Richard Cockerill, there was terrific fight in their response to the record European beating they had taken at Thomond Park.
Leicester had 13 first-team players absent including Mat Tait, JP Pietersen, Matt Toomua, Dan Cole, Marcos Ayerza and Tom Croft, but the result leaves the group in the balance, with Munster’s rearranged trip to Racing 92 next to come on 7 January, and Glasgow well in the mix too.
Leaving that shakedown aside, this was a good old-fashioned Anglo-Irish scrap in which the French referee Pascal Gaüzère was dead set on punishing anything remotely resembling foul play.
Manu Tuilagi was one of three Tigers sent to the sin bin in the previous meeting, and the England centre who has had such a rotten run of injuries in recent years was shown another yellow card for an innocuous shoulder charge on Ryan Scannell in the 30th minute.
At this stage Leicester were trailing 6-0 to two penalties by Bleyendaal – one of them for a needless penalty conceded by George Worth with a block on Simon Zebo.
Tuilagi has made just 46 appearances for club and country since the Lions tour of 2013 – this was his third start of the current campaign – and he and Toomua have represented £800,000-worth of midfield talent when they were absent together.
But in this latest 10-minute spell without their Samoan-born colossus Tigers did well to claw back to 6-6 with penalties by Williams, who was starting in place of the concussed Freddie Burns.
Such is the depth of the Leicester squad that their pack still maintained a competitive edge, and behind them Ben Youngs brought the zip and vision of his recent form with England.
The scrum-half had Munster red jerseys swarming over him but mostly kept his composure, while Tuilagi showed plenty of threat when he was able to take front-foot ball on the run.
A let-off for Leicester came when Bleyendaal missed a penalty two minutes into added time at the end of the first half – this after Tuilagi’s centre partner Jack Roberts had kicked the ball out thinking time was up.
Bleyendaal did manage to nudge Munster ahead again four minutes into the second half, but Leicester had a good spell in response, forcing the likes of Pete O’Mahony and Conor Murray into reverse and picking off two more penalty goals for Williams to lead 12-9.
The excitement ratcheted up when a Munster attack in the Leicester 22 broke up with an all-out sprint along his left touchline by Tigers’ Adam Thompstone that was brilliantly chased down in turn by Zebo.
But referee Gaüzère controversially judged the eventual tackle by the Ireland international worthy of a yellow card as Thompstone was denied the chance to chase his kick ahead.
It gave Williams a kick for a 15-9 lead with 13 minutes remaining and the Welshmen held his nerve.
A skewed throw into a line-out by Tom Youngs was a missed chance to build more pressure but the Leicester captain shared in a surging scrum straight afterwards to gain ground by different means.
These two teams are forever representing a proud European history, with four titles between them in the Noughties - and the 2006 and 2008 champions Munster kept battling to come within a whisker of a try from a line-out drive on 73 minutes.
Still playing with 14 men, the Irish province then kicked for another line-out and a good, tight drive set up hooker Scannell for his try.
The conversion by Bleyendaal on a 45-degree angle was a wobbly effort as he slipped on the approach but it hit the target, and Leicester lost Tom Youngs to the sin bin for his attempt to collapse the try-scoring maul.
It needed one last twist to save Leicester and it came when Munster sealed off a ruck, and Williams calmly landed the winning points.
“You’ll have to ask the chairman how much time I have,” said Cockerill, a day after his 46th birthday. “If I get sacked because we’re not good enough I’ll go and get another job. It’s been a great weekend.”
Scorers:
Leicester Tigers: Penalties: Williams 6.
Munster: Try: N Scannell; Conversion: Bleyendaal; Penalties: Bleyendaal 3.
Teams
Leicester Tigers: G Worth (rep H Thacker 78th min); P Betham (T Brady 72), J Roberts, M Tuilagi, A Thompstone; O Williams, B Youngs; E Genge (L Mulipola 61), T Youngs (capt), P Cilliers (G Bateman 51), E Slater, G Kitchener (M Fitzgerald 51), L Hamilton, B O'Connor, L McCaffrey (M Williams 61).
Munster: S Zebo; D Sweetnam, J Taute, R Scannell, K Earls (A Conway 69); T Bleyendaal, C Murray (D Williams 72); D Kilcoyne (J Cronin 51), N Scannell, J Ryan (S Archer 75), D Ryan, B Holland (J Kleyn 51), P O'Mahony (capt), T O'Donnell (J O'Donoghue 63), CJ Stander.
Referee: P Gauzere (France).
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