Tigers stun South Africa

BBC Sports - Saturday, November 07, 2009 3:50 PM

Former Australia winger Lote Tuqiri came on for his first Leicester start on 55 minutes as the Tigers beat South Africa 22-17.

LEICESTER produced an impressive display to claim a stunning win over world champions South Africa in front of a record crowd at Welford Road.

The Tigers, without five England stars and eight others, went 8-0 down through a penalty and Jongi Nokwe's try.

But the home side hit back to go 16-8 ahead, Lucas Amorosino scoring a try and Ben Youngs adding three penalties.

Six more points from Youngs put the Tigers in control, and the home side held on to seal the upset.

South Africa, who named five uncapped players in their XV, have November Tests against France, Italy and Ireland.

And following a successful year which saw them claim the Tri-Nations title and winning the series against the British and Irish Lions, South Africa were expected to stroll through this contest - which saw the offical unveiling of the new 10,000-seater Caterpillar Stand before kick-off.

Leicester were without the England quintet of Tom Croft, Lewis Moody, Jordan Crane, Dan Hipkiss and Louis Deacon while seven players were out injured.

Lock Ben Kay was also pulled from the Tigers XV at the last moment for unspecified reasons.

The record 24,000 sell-out crowd feared the worst when the tourists went 8-0 with the help of Nokwe, who gathered a Pienaar grubber kick to score.

But South Africa, who were getting flustered by the Leicester harrying, lost skipper Chiliboy Ralepelle to injury midway through the first half and on 27 minutes the game turned when wing Amorosino jinked through some poor Springbok defence to touch down under the posts.

Youngs scored his second and third penalties before the break and then another after half-time to make the score 19-11.

Former Australia winger Lote Tuqiri came on for his first Leicester start on 55 minutes and after Youngs found the posts again from the 10-metre line, Pienaar had to kick from very wide out to bring the deficit back to eight.

Pienaar reduced the gap to five from in front of the posts to increase the Welford Road nerves and to set up a five-minute period of intense South African pressure.

But Leicester held on and Tuqiri scrambled the ball out of touch to clinch the victory.
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Leicester head coach Richard Cockerill:
"I'd have to take my hat off to the players. I read some criticism this morning about the fixture and the two sides that were put out.

"It was all about us tonight and the facilities we're trying to provide. Maybe South Africa are a little shell-shocked that club rugby can be like that.

"The spirit here is second to none and I don't know where it comes from. Our scrum was immense and Geoff Parling was superb in the front row.

"Rugby can get quite scientific in its analysis these days. Sometimes you just need 15 blokes to come here and roll their sleeves up. The scientists can't quantify that. And that's what we did tonight."

South Africa assistant coach Dick Muir:
"You can't play this game without any possession. We were poor at the breakdown and poor at set pieces so we couldn't get the game going.

"We just move on. We came over here with an experiment and perhaps it didn't come off as planned.

"I don't think I've ever seen (a South Africa pack) as bad as that, especially from a coaching perspective. We were given a bit of a lesson at the scrums.

"Hats off to the Tigers. They were incredibly strong in that department so we've got to go back to the drawing board.

"Nobody likes losing. When you take a squad like this and have a short turnaround maybe you're not as well prepared as you might be.

"It will probably cause the guys to be a little bit more determined. When you're on the top of the pile there's a lot of sides who want to knock you off, so that's the territory we've created for ourselves."