Wigglesworth off to a flier as Leicester cruise home
@therugbypaper
Leicester ……….28pts
Tries: Porter 43, Watson 57, 65 Conversions: Burns 44, 58 Penalties: Burns 12, 19, 53
Gloucester ……. 13pts
Tries: Tuisue 41, May 78 Penalties: Hastings 7
RICHARD Wigglesworth won his first match as interim head coach at Leicester Tigers as they comfortably saw off Gloucester to hold the inaugural Slater Cup.
Recently retired lock Ed Slater, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in June, was honoured in the meeting of his two former sides, with the trophy awarded to the winner of the match across both league fixtures this season.
The win saw Leicester – with Wigglesworth now in charge after Steve Borthwick left to become England head coach – overtake the Cherry and Whites in the Premiership table by two points and move up to fourth.
Wigglesworth said: “I am learning as I go along and I intend to put everything into it. It was a huge kicking battle in the first half which was pretty even, but we became dominant in the tackle and ruck area which gave us field position.”
Fijian Albert Tuisue made an early impact for the visitors, winning a turnover inside two minutes and then crossing the try line, only to be held up.
Adam Hastings put Gloucester's first points on the board, with the only downside for the visitors in a dominant opening 10 minutes being the loss of Wales winger Louis Rees-Zammit, who hobbled off with an ankle injury six weeks before the start of the Six Nations.
Freddie Burns retaliated with two penalties of his own to edge Leicester in front, but in a cagey half, Dan Kelly had a try scrubbed off for the Tigers. Jack Van Poortvliet had darted through a gap in the Gloucester defence and offloaded to Kelly to run over, only for the officials to rule that Dan Cole held Tuisue's ankle in the build-up, allowing the initial space to open. With the clock in the red at the end of the half, Tuisue made Leicester pay and stretched over to score from a driving maul.
TEAMS
LEICESTER: Steward, Watson (Ashton 66), Porter, Kelly, Potter, Burns (Atkinson 75), Van Poortvliet (Youngs 59); Whitcombe (Leatigaga 70), Clare (Oghre 70), Cole (Heyes 59), Wells (Green 65), Chessum, Liebenberg (c), Reffell (Jansen 70), Cracknell
Not used: Jansen
GLOUCESTER: Carreras (Kveseladze 39), Rees-Zammit (Evans 10, Chapman 53), Harris, Atkinson, May, Hastings (Evans 67), Varney; Rapava Ruskin (Seville 73), Socino (McGuigan 54), Gotovtsev (Knight 67), Clarke (Craig 67), Alemanno, Ackermann, Ludlow (c), Tuisue (Morgan 59)
REFEREE: Christophe Ridley
ATTENDANCE: 22,000
Star man Anthony Watson -Leicester
Guy Porter instantly put Leicester back in front after the break, darting around the Gloucester line on the wing and then running between two defenders to cross the line.
It proved a hugely physical match with limited chances at either end before Anthony Watson capitalised as Leicester turned up the pressure, darting inside from close range to stretch the lead to 15 points.
The winger dived over in the corner for his second nine minutes later and while his England teammate Jonny May ran in for his first try of the season, it was too little too late for Gloucester.
