In the biggest game ever in Nottingham’s decade at The Bay in front of a record crowd of 3,690 Leicester Tigers showed their Premiership class as they ran in 10 tries. The Archers were in no way overawed, however, and took a bonus point from the game with five tries of their own.
With a quarter of the game gone Nottingham were in a 12 point lead as, despite not getting their hands on the ball until the fifth minute, a combination of resolute defending, Leicester ill discipline and a powerful maul set up Harry Clayton to drive over in the left hand corner and Jacob Wright to do likewise on the right.
Nottingham Head Coach Craig Hammond said “I think we were pretty dominant up front, even against a Premiership team so I’m really proud of the boys. We scored a couple of line out drives and our scrum went really well.”
Nottingham then allowed Leicester back into the match, as Hammond described “First 25 minutes were really good, we put them under a lot of pressure. Then it just goes to show, against a team at their level, if you make a couple of errors they’ll be scoring tries, and for some of them we made it too easy for them.”
And score tries Leicester did, four unanswered before the break, from Matt Rogerson, Archie Vanes, Ollie Allan and, with the home side reduced to 14 following a Sam Green yellow card on the stroke of half-time, a Solomone Kata quick tap five metres out.
Jamie Shillcock was perfect with the boot all evening meaning the players returned to the sheds with the score Nottingham 12-28 Leicester Tigers.
Michael Cheika’s men continued to make their man advantage count as they started the second period as they finished the first, with Izaia Perese breaking from the Nottingham 10 metre line to race home and James Whitcombe bundling over.
Wright briefly stemmed the tide on 50 minutes with a carbon copy of his first try before Jack Kinder and replacement Ollie Hassell-Collins, who had clearly injected extra pace into Leicester’s attack since coming on at half-time, extended the visitors’ lead to 56-17.
Nottingham then claimed the bonus point but the quality of the try meant it should have been worth two. James Cherry broke from halfway and managed to step a couple of cover defenders who were left on their backsides. He was tackled inches from the whitewash but managed to pop the ball up to Green to dive over.
Cherry was modest in describing his effort “It was class, really good lineout from the boys then Jai Johal put it on a plate for me. I was lucky to make that line break and beat a man or two then find Sammy Green giving awesome support. It looks good for me but it was the boys around me that made it possible.”
Emeka Ilione restored the Tigers’ 39 point advantage before Harry Graham channelled his inner James Cherry to run half the length of the pitch to score. With David Williams in support he sold a couple of dummies before cutting inside to dot down himself.
Cherry was once again complimentary of his teammates “Gaz (Harry Graham) has been class this year, as have all the boys. That was brilliant from Harry but, again, it comes from the forwards giving them a good lineout platform, then the backs making some really good decisions in the midfield and Gaz did an awesome job to finish it off.”
With the clock in the red at the end of the match Nottingham were still choosing to play their trademark free-flowing rugby but, when Jack Dickinson was pinged for not releasing on his own 22, it allowed the away side to mount one final attack that led to Hassell-Collins adding his second and the Tigers’ 10th try of the night, making the final score Nottingham 29-70 Leicester Tigers.
Hammond summed it up “It was entertaining for the crowd. But they’re world class players and they’re near the top of the Premiership for a reason so I was really proud of the boys’ effort to come back and score a couple of tries at the end. That’s our way, it’s a good spectacle and it was great to see a big crowd down here.”