Leicester turn Gloucester over in Kingsholm

Leicester won 26-5 at Kingsholm to maintain their recent dominance over Gloucester and keep alive their hopes of an end-of-season play-off spot.

It was Leicester’s sixth consecutive win over Gloucester and their 14th in the last 17 fixtures between the clubs.

Their tries came from Mike Brown, Julian Montoya, Ben Youngs and Jasper Wiese, with Handre Pollard adding three conversions.

Gloucester’s sole response was a Jonny May try, with this defeat a bitter blow to their play-off hopes.

Gloucester exerted early pressure with a couple of close-range driving line-outs but they lost possession at the second to enable Tigers to clear the danger.

Minutes later, Leicester had a similar period of pressure but they also could not capitalise as the hosts broke away with a superb passage of play.

First May, playing against his old club, burst away down the right wing before a long pass from Santiago Carreras saw Ollie Thorley run 40 metres on the opposite flank but desperate defence from Tigers kept their line intact.

It was Leicester’s turn to threaten when Matt Scott made a clean break and looked a likely scorer but the centre was indecisive in not running hard for the line and the cover defence was able to haul him down.

As a result an evenly-contested first quarter finished scoreless but soon after Leicester suffered a blow when their wing Harry Potter was sin-binned for a deliberate knock-on.

In Potter’s absence, the home side were able to build up a real head of steam and aided by frequent penalties in their favour, they were able to batter the opposition line.

It seemed Gloucester must score but remarkably Tigers held out with Potter able to return with no damage done to the scoreboard and it remained at 0-0 at the interval.

After the restart, the home side continued to have the lion’s share of possession and territory but in the 48th minute, Leicester replaced both their locks.

One of the new faces George Martin made an immediate impact by brushing aside Jordy Reid’s tackle on a thunderous burst into the home 22.

From that position, Gloucester were penalised and Tigers appeared to have scored when Hanro Liebenberg reached out to touchdown but TMO replays showed there was a double movement from the flanker.

However, Leicester were not to be denied and they broke the deadlock after 55 minutes when Brown finished off a succession of close-range drives.

Pollard’s conversion rebounded back off a post but five minutes later his side scored another when their skipper Montoya finished off a driving line-out.

Pollard succeeded with a more difficult conversion before Gloucester finally got a reward for their commitment with a try from May.

The game looked in the balance but Lewis Ludlow was yellow-carded for a needless deliberate knock-on with Tigers capitalising with a try from Youngs.

Gloucester’s woes continued when May followed his captain into the sin-bin but although Ludlow returned, Wiese powered off for the bonus-point try with the last play of the game.