Monday, December 27, 2004

WORCESTER have often held up Leicester as the club they want to be in five years time.

At Welford Road, they looked about five years off a re-sult. This was a Premiership non-contest but, you have to suspect, that the Sixways man-agement knew this defeat was coming.

Afterwards, they weren't exactly tearing their hair out. This was more of a masochistic ex-periment which will have taught the coaches a little more about the qualities of their squad when put un-der the most intense pressure.

Neil Cole, for ex-ample, did Matt Powell's reputation no harm at all as the former Harlequins man looked on from the bench. The scrum-half, out of the starting line-up because of a groin strain, watched Cole's ineffective box kicks and way-ward breaks give Leicester yet more ammunition as he struggled to cope with the Tigers' in-cessant pack. To their credit, Leices-ter's in-your-face back-line made most of Worcester's side look ordinary on a day where they re-turned to the bot-tom of the pile.

Northampton's shock victory at London Irish meant that Saturday's showdown with the Exiles took on even more significance. You couldn't help but wonder, how-ever, whether Worcester were al-ready thinking of the game as they strolled onto the Welford Road pitch.

Without the essen-tial central pairing of Dale Rasmussen and Thomas Lombard and with the clear indication that Powell was not to be risked, Worcester removed James Brown and Tony Windo from the fray with half of the contest still re-maining. Let's be clear, this was a damage limitation exercise.

Still, with 39 min-utes gone, Worces-ter were still in touch. Leicester led 10-0 through Neil Back's 15th minute try and Andy Goode's penalty and conversion. Their defence, by hook or by crook, had held up Leicester on three occasions be-fore replacement referee Rob Debney awarded the home side a penalty try much to the satis-faction of 16,815 crowd. Whether it would have been given at Sixways is another matter en-tirely.

The decision seemed to kill Worcester mentally as the Tigers then ran in another two tries before half-time to end the game as a contest. First, Windo's pan-icky pass was gob-bled up by Leicester and, via Back, Daryl Gibson ran in. And, with Worcester looking to get into half-time in one piece, Goode de-cided to make the most of the static defence as he dum-mied his way to the line for Leicester's fourth try.

The golden rules of keeping it tight, making your tackles and not even think-ing about turning over the ball were all broken in first-half stoppage time and Leicester illus-trated what the best do when handed chances on a plate. They take them and simply grind you into the turf.

A classical second-half score from Geordan Murphy, who also set up Harry Ellis' and Dan Hipkiss' subsequent tries, were punctu-ated by Gary Trueman's touch-down just after the hour for the visitors. It was their one bright spot on a dis-tinctly grey day.

Worcester, though, will simply put this game out of their minds and concen-trate on the re-mainder of their campaign. The re-sult will have come as no surprise to anybody involved at Sixways, such is the obvious chasm be-tween Leicester and the Warriors.

The only positive to be taken was that they won't meet the Tigers again this season.

Worcester: DELPORT 7; Pieters 5, Hinshelwood 6, Trueman 6, Samp-son 5; Brown 6, Cole 5; Windo 5, Van Niekerk 6, Horsman 6, Collier 6, Gillies 6, Hickey 5, Sander-son 6, MacLeod-Henderson 5.

Replacements: Fortey (Windo 40), Hall (Van Niekerk 64), Vaili (Hickey 51), Murphy (Collier 60), Powell, Hayes (Brown 40), Roke.

Man of the match: Thinus Delport - Another consistent display by the South African.