Northampton Saints vs Leicester Tigers match report: Burns boosts visitors’ play-off hopes at expense of Saints
Northampton Saints 24 Leicester Tigers 30: Northampton’s director of rugby, Jim Mallinder, admits post-season is now ‘realistically out of reach’
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Your support makes all the difference.Fly-half Freddie Burns guided Leicester to a win that makes them odds-on to claim the fourth Premiership play-off place alongside Saracens, Exeter and Wasps although mathematically they could yet be overhauled by Sale Sharks. Certainly if Tigers win their next Premiership fixture against Worcester at Welford Road on 30 April they will knock Northampton out of the title race – a fall from grace for the 2014 champions who also finished top of the regular-season table last season.
“We’ll keep fighting but realistically that’s the play-offs out of reach for us,” said Jim Mallinder, Northampton’s director of rugby. And their captain Tom Wood added: “Today hurts a lot, for a number of reasons, in a local derby. But the predicament we are in is down to a lack of consistency across the season. We have had some great wins in Europe but that consistency we have had in previous years hasn’t been there.” Mallinder’s Leicester counterpart Richard Cockerill is hopeful his club will have enough points in the bag to be able to rest players from the final league fixture at Bath in May. The Tigers’ are also fighting on the European front with a Champions Cup semi-final against Racing 92 at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground next Sunday.
Northampton were severely depleted by injuries, with Dylan Hartley, George North and Ben Foden among the absentees, and the first obvious pinch point came in Foden’s position of full-back. Ahsee Tuala was pressed into service with a lot of strapping round his right knee, but the Samoan was left utterly foxed by a show and go from Harry Thacker as the Leicester hooker scored a brilliant try with an arcing run from halfway, using Niki Goneva as a decoy. Thacker may be “half the size of some other hookers in the Premiership,” as a smiling Cockerill put it afterwards, but with Hartley’s England colleague Tom Youngs missing from the Leicester team, the 22-year-old Tiger and Saints’ Mikey Haywood are making strong cases for an England Saxons tour this summer, or even the seniors’ trip to Australia. Some say Thacker may alternatively turn out to be the answer to England’s prayers as an openside flanker.
Tuala was substituted immediately after Burns’s conversion of the try, which put Leicester 10-0 up. The scores were level again after the first of three penalties kicked by Steve Myler and the Northampton fly-half’s conversion of Teimana Harrison’s try made by Luther Burrell’s crash-ball break. But Burrell was then culpable of gifting Goneva an interception try, by forcing a pass that was not on while he was being tackled by Peter Betham. It meant Goneva had scored for the sixth match running, and the try was the flying Fijian's 12th try of the club season.
Myler’s penalty cut Leicester’s lead to 17-13 at half-time, and going into the final quarter it was 23-18 after the second and third penalties kicked by Burns, who is on a consistent scoring run after his recent bespoke coaching from former Northampton and England fly-half Paul Grayson. In between, Saints had a try for centre George Pisi, battering Leicester's captain and full-back Mat Tait from his path.
A glut of penalties conceded by Northampton’s scrum and Leicester for pulling down the maul gave the coaches contrasting reasons for bitterness afterwards, but despite a few tussles and scraps there was no card, yellow or red, for the first time in 16 Premiership meetings between these East Midlands neighbours since October 2009. Tension aplenty, though, as Myler pegged Leicester back to 23-21, then Burns grabbed the game-breaking try in the 64th minute. Despite limping due to a twist of the ankle just beforehand, the fly-half scored from Manu Tuilagi’s sharp take-and-give, after hard yards made near the posts by Goneva.
Northampton Saints A Tuala (H Mallinder 13); K Pisi, G Pisi, L Burrell, J Elliott (T Collins 68); S Myler (JJ Hanrahan 72), T Kessell; A Waller (C Ma’afu 65), M Haywood, K Brookes (P Hill 59), J Craig, C Day (V Matfield 59), C Lawes, T Wood (capt), T Harrison (B Nutley 65).
Scorers Tries: Harrison, G Pisi; Con: Myler; Pens: Myler 3, Hanrahan.
Leicester Tigers M Tait (capt); T Veainu, P Betham, M Tuilagi, V Goneva (A Thompstone 72); F Burns (O Williams 65), B Youngs (S Harrison 70); M Ayerza (L Mulipola 59), H Thacker (G Bateman 63), D Cole, D Barrow, G Kitchener (E Slater 58), M Fitzgerald, L McCaffrey, O Fonua (T Croft 48).
Scorers Tries: Thacker, Goneva, Burns; Cons: Burns 3; Pens: Burns 3.
Referee T Wigglesworth (RFU).
Attendance 15,249.
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