Leicester land late winner to pip Munster

Yet all day the suffering faithful among more than 24,000 at Welford Road had cheered themselves hoarse, drowning out all other noise and their own bitter memories of the previous week. They roared once more when Leicester were awarded a penalty 52 metres out and out of the dark chill of the evening, Owen Williams stepped up, kicked a beautiful goal and Leicester had won at the death.

Back to the temporal — the win just about kept them in contention for qualification but only in terms of possible mathematics — even if they win their two remaining games by big scores, they will almost certainly miss out.

On the other hand, Munster have three games remaining, two of them against the dire Racing 92, who on the evidence of the competition to date surrendered before the sporting battle even started. It will be one of the shocks of all time if they can be in any way competitive against Munster. However, Glasgow can put the Scottish cat amongst the pigeons by beating Munster at home after Christmas, and on the evidence of this weekend they are definitely good enough.

And having dealt with the more elevated aspects of the day, onto the catastrophe. The refereeing of Pascal Gauzere was an early Christmas pantomime tragi-comedy, with the stress firmly on the tragic.

He was terrible all match, but exceeded himself with his yellow cards, or lack of them. He gave one to Manu Tuilagi for a mild contact, shoulder-to-shoulder, with his opposite number.

Then there was his reaction to each of the four convincing attacks which Leicester mounted in the game. Of the first two, led by Ellis Genge with powerful running, Peter O’Mahony of Munster killed them both deep in the red zone knowingly. It was the kind of offence for which yellow cards were invented and, pathetically, Gauzere gave only penalties.

In the second half, after Jack Roberts had made a run out of defence, O’Mahony was lurking again wide out and duly killed the play. This time, Gauzere bailed himself out by finding another offence at a subsequent ruck, without even bothering to speak to O’Mahony.

And then towards the end, Adam Thompstone was away down the left wing, chipped ahead and Simon Zebo, again in full command of his own actions, dragged Thompstone down from behind. We then had a mini-pantomine with Gauzere blithely happy to wave play on, and he had to be almost begged by one of his touch-judges to refer the matter to the television match official, who banished Zebo at long last.

It was no epic in terms of true class, at some stages it looked like Conor Murray of Munster and 29 game triers. Munster never had to be as expansive as they had been the previous week, and they guarded against anything disastrous happening by the excellence of their defence around the fringes, where both Donnacha Ryan and Billy Holland were remarkably good.

Murray’s box kicks were superb, as was his controlling of play, but for the rest Munster just ran straight and played hard, and there is no question which of these two teams deserve to proceed, although it would still be a surprise if Munster reached the final.

Leicester had massive hearts. But what they did not have was a real Tiger pack. To be fair to their director of rugby Richard Cockerill, he has never moaned about the fact that not once this season has he been able to field more than half his top team and yesterday, with both his top props away, and seven other international players not available, it was probably a hopeless case.

But until Roberts and Thompstone got away out wide, Leicester could make no dent with a scrum or a maul or by taking the ball around the corner, and so tended to shovel the ball under the teeth of the Munster chasers.

And while Munster used Rory Scannell well by launching him over the advantage line, Leicester either would not or could not use Tuilagi in the same role, even though the England centre made a nonsense of the defence of Bleyendaal.

Owen Williams won it for Leicester, clinching a fantastic battle if not a classic match. Good for Leicester hearts. But in the final analysis, it was Munster who won the sporting war, and in terms of the aggregate, by a mile.

Manu’s sense of deja vu

For the second Saturday in a row, Manu Tuilagi was shown a yellow card. Yesterday, he received it for leading with his shoulder. Last week, the Tigers centre was sin-binned for illegal clearing out at a ruck

Star man: Owen Williams (Leicester Tigers)