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Bristol 1999: Cubs earning their stripes
By Denise November 13 2002
In the first of five features about my most memorable Tigers games we go back to 1999 during the Rugby World Cup. The season before Deano had won his first piece of silverware as DoR - the Allied Dunbar Premiership 1.
Most doubted that the feat could be achieved for a second year in succession especially given that Tigers lost about 10 players to the RWC for the first couple of months, and indeed the thrashings of the young squad away first at Northampton and then Gloucester seemed to point to a poor league finish. However, Tigers being Tigers were having none of it.

So what is my memorable game? Bristol at home - a strange choice some of you may think and indeed I am not entirely sure why it sticks in my memory. I certainly can't remember what happened during the game, but I was still fairly new to rugby at the time so many of the coarser and finer points of the game were lost on me.

The thing I do remember is that this was a fairly big game, Bristol had just been promoted under the guidance of Deano's predecessor Bob Dwyer. Bristol, I think were doing fairly well at the time and indeed the general feeling was that this game would probably be a loss and the Tiger cubs would struggle.

The Tigers team contained a lot of new faces including the now familiar names of Ben Kay, Adam Balding, Peter Short, and the 19 year old half-back pairing of Andy Goode and James Grindal. There were some crowd favourites in there as well - Pat Howard, Dave Lougheed and Tim Stimpson. Looking back at the teamsheet (shown below) Tigers new fly-half signing Craig McMullen was actually playing out-half for bristol during this game.

Six tries were scored during this game, with Ben Kay, Nnamdi Ezulike and Dave Lougheed (Tigers top try-scorer that season) all touching down for Tigers. It was probably a mixture of the expectation of a loss and the high scoring that led to the brilliant atmosphere which I remember for this game. Although there were only 7785 people at this game (what a difference a couple of years and 6 trophies makes) I still remember the amount of chanting that went on. Possibly because my friend pointed out how loud it was when she had walked past the ground during th game.

The Welford Road crowd often seems to respond better to a challenge and the tougher the contest the louder we cheer, we must have given the youngsters a real boost that day and vice-versa. Tigers went on to win the game 36-19, a fair result for a full-strength team let alone a team with so many new boys.



Leicester 36 - Bristol 19 (23-Oct-1999)

1. Perry Freshwater
2. Dorian West (c)
3. Derek Jelley
4. John Welborn
5. Ben Kay (1 try)
6. Paul Gustard
7. Peter Short
8. Adam Balding
9. James Grindal
10. Andy Goode
11. Dave Lougheed (1 try)
12. Pat Howard
13. Stuart Potter
14. Nnamdi Ezulike (1 try)
15. Tim Stimpson (3 cons, 5 pens)

Rep: Neil Fletcher, Phil Greenbury, Jamie Hamilton, Geordan Murphy


1.Darren Crompton
2. Damien Rudham
3. Paul Johnstone
4. Alan Charron
5. Scott Morgan
6. Simon Fenn
7. Adam Vander (2 tries)
8. Dean Ryan (c)
9. Gareth Baber
10. Craig McMullen
11. Spencer Brown
12. Luke Nabaro (1 try)
13. Frank Bunce
14. Dean Dewdney
15. Matt Back (2 cons)

Rep: Alex Cadwallader

Attendance: 7785
Referee: Fisher t


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