LEICESTER TIGERS do most of their shopping in the South Sea Islands nowadays, and a hat-trick of tries in the space of 16 minutes early in the second half from their Fijian left wing Vereniki Goneva turned this Premiership opener from an unexpected struggle into a stroll in the park.
Goneva nearly moved to Castres in the French Top 14 last season, but something — whether a kindly word or a wave of the chequebook — persuaded him to stay, and Tigers were indebted to him yesterday for kick-starting what had been a sluggish start to their first game.
As for Newcastle, director of rugby Dean Richards had allowed himself a minor snort last week at the bookmakers making his team favourites to finish 11th — bottom but one — saying: “It’s not a great bet as we won’t be 11th at the end of the season.” On this evidence the former Tigers’ favourite may well be right. If anything, 11th looks a tad optimistic.
Not many sides manage to lose their final 16 league matches in a season without being relegated, and a 17th consecutive Premiership defeat was always likely on a ground where the Falcons haven’t won since December 1997 — Richards’ final game for Leicester before he retired.
Newcastle haven’t won their opening fixture in the Premiership since beating Sale in 2007, and they never threatened to improve on that record despite coming up against a Tigers’ side with no less than 13 players unavailable for selection. It had been 12 until Tom Croft strained a shoulder during a training jog on Friday — more bad luck for the England flanker, who played the first and final games of last season, but missed all the rest with a knee injury.
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Neither Tigers nor the Falcons seemed entirely aware that their new season was scheduled to start at 3pm, as nothing at all happened before half-time — at least nothing that threatened to raise the pulse rates among another bumper Welford Road crowd.
Freddie Burns, making his Premiership debut for Tigers at fly-half, kicked four penalties to give his new club a 12-3 interval lead, but while there was plenty of honest perspiration from both sets of players, there was precious little in the way of subtlety with ball in hand. There was more excitement in the first nine minutes of the second half than there had been in the previous 40.
Three tries were scored in that period, the first of them by Newcastle barely a minute after the break. Burns’ missed touch didn’t seem to threaten danger when it was caught just inside the touchline by left wing Sinoti Sinoti (so good they named him twice) but a brilliantly timed offload to full-back Simon Hammersley created a huge hole in the home defence, and blindside flanker Richard Mayhew trotted in for a converted try to narrow the gap.
The Tigers badly needed a wake-up call and the alarm duly went off. Goneva’s first try, in the 44th minute, was a little fortunate as Manu Tuilagi’s pass bounced off a defender’s shoulder and fell obligingly over the line for the Fijian to fall on the ball.
His second, though, was a beauty, created by Burns when the No 10 slipped between two tackles and offloaded just in time to Goneva, who cut inside off his right foot to score under the posts.
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His third was a length-of- the-field interception run after a wild, eyes-closed pass from replacement scrum-half Ruki Tipuna. To round off his day, Goneva’s parents, who had never before been out of Fiji, flew over to see him play for the first time.
Leicester’s bonus-point score came after a massive shove from a five-yard scrum from the Tigers’ replacement No 9, David Mele, who had come on midway through the second half for Ben Youngs, the captain.
Newcastle, to their credit, kept plugging away, and might have scored more than once against a Tigers’ defence that rarely looked comfortable and clocked up a less than impressive tally of missed tackles.
As it was, though, the Falcons managed just a late consolation try against a depleted Tigers side that hasn’t lost at home since last November. After suffering a number of defeats in their pre-season warm-up matches, it looks like Newcastle could be in for yet another long winter of struggling against relegation.
Star man: Vereniki Goneva (Leicester)
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Leicester Tigers: Morris; Scully, M Tuilagi (Smith 66min), Baikeinuku (Loamanu 74min), Goneva; Burns (Williams 68min), B Youngs (Mele 61min); Mulipola (Bristow 66min), Ghiraldini (T Youngs 44min), Balmain (Pasquali 73min), De Chaves; Kitchener, Croft, Salvi, Crane (Barbieri 61min)
Newcastle Falcons: Hammersley; Sinoti, Powell, Socino, Cato (A Tuilagi 25min, Cato 35min, Tuilagi 50min); Godman (Tiesi 52min), Blair (Tipuna (52min); Vickers (Rogers 11min, Tomaszczyk 73min), McGuigan (Brookes h-t), Tomaszczyk (Lawson h-t), Green (Barrow 62min), Furno, Mayhew (Saull 62min), Welch (Saull 33min, Welch h-t), Hogg