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Tuilagi scores in 100th game; Northampton end winless run
By Nicholas McGee
Manu Tuilagi scored what proved the decisive try on his 100th Leicester Tigers appearance as they beat bottom club London Irish 19-15 in the Premiership on Saturday.
Leicester had ended 2017 with six defeats in succession across all competitions and were far from convincing at Welford Road against the favourites for the drop.
Matt Toomua's try and George Ford's conversion gave Leicester a narrow 7-5 half-time lead after Joe Cokanasiga's score had put Irish ahead.
Jonny May went over for Leicester in the 42nd minute but Greig Tonks' penalty kept the visitors in touch.
However, Tuliagi celebrated his landmark by diving under the posts as the Tigers were rewarded for concerted pressure, rendering Alex Lewington's score six minutes from time nothing more than a consolation.
Northampton Saints ended a run of seven consecutive Premiership defeats by edging fourth-placed Gloucester 22-19 in dramatic fashion.
Northampton trailed 19-15 in the dying moments but were awarded a penalty try in the 80th minute when Gloucester collapsed a maul, finally giving the Franklin's Gardens crowd reason to celebrate as the visitors missed the chance to go second.
There was more drama at the AJ Bell Stadium as Sale Sharks required a late penalty to defeat Harlequins 30-29.
Quins trailed 17-5 after 25 minutes but went into the break 22-17 ahead thanks to tries from Charlie Walker and Ross Chisholm, and a Marcus Smith penalty.
Joe Marler was sent off in the 58th minute for a needless shoulder to the head of TJ Ioane and, though Jamie Roberts crossed again for Quins after AJ MacGinty had knocked over a penalty for Sale, the momentum swung back in favour of the hosts.
Rohan Janse van Rensburg's second try cut the gap to 29-27 and five minutes from time the boot of Faf de Klerk settled a thrilling encounter as he converted Sale's fourth penalty of the match.
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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