By Rucky
December 20 2010

Leicester and Perpignan hammered out what most observers would likely call a deserved draw on this, surely the frostiest of afternoons at Welford Road. With Britain in the middle of a pre-Christmas cold snap, it was with expectant hearts, well-wrapped limbs and precautionary hip flasks that the familiar throng of red, green and white converged upon Welford Road, hoping to see Leicester warm their frozen cockles by avenging the narrow but ultimately predictable defeat last week at the hands of what amounts to Catalonia’s national rugby union team. Leicester fans have seen their team play some scintillating late get-out-of-jail cards in recent seasons, but it was the Frenchmen who snatched this one with seconds on the clock, a late, late Nicolas Laharrague penalty earning Perpignan a draw and throwing the Tigers’ previously uncontested control of group five into serious jeopardy.

With minutes to go before kick off the whole spectacle seemed to be in jeopardy, the south-west corner of the pitch apparently frozen through. Association football’s premier league had already called off all of their scheduled fixtures for the day for conditions no worse. So it was with bated breath that we watched the referee Mr. Fitzgibbons and his assistants poke, prod and prance around on the offending section of turf, deliberating no doubt on the competing interests of player safety and Sky Sports’ investment in the fixture. Beaming operations manager Charles Rayner, lending his groundstaff a hand to uncover the pitch of its protective nylon sheeting immediately in front of us, allayed fears by telling our section of the terrace that ‘we should be alright’.

A moment’s silence before the kick-off in memory of the late motor-racing tycoon, and latterly the owner of Gloucester Rugby Club, Tom Walkinshaw, was fitting tribute to his contribution to the professional club game that we’re now so lucky to have to watch in this country. Peter Wheeler’s tribute in his programme notes to one of his corporate rivals, as well as the crowd’s almost perfect observance of the silence, gave comforting reminders that the true heart and soul of the game may not be lost despite the win-at-all-costs pressures of modern rugby.

Talking of silence and traditional values, the small contingent of shivering Catalans at the top of the Caterpillar stand demonstrated from the off that they couldn’t give a fig for the usual Welford Road quiet during place kicks. After enduring incomprehensible shouting in French accompanied by enthusiastic flag waving, followed by theatrical coughing, and then more incomprehensible shouting at successive home kicks, sections of the Welford Road faithful could tolerate no more and returned the favour by abandoning their previously pious policy of silence during opposition kicks.

Early exchanges were dominated by handling errors from both sides, with hands as cold as the north wind. For the first twenty minutes Perpignan huffed and puffed with the ball in hand, offloading fluently out of the tackle and getting the better out of the breakdown. Leicester huffed and puffed right back at them in defence, invariably shackling French knees and ankles at the third attempt if not always the first or the second. Only Mr. Fitzgibbons was able to add any genuine bite to the teams’ respective barks, a steady trickle of seemingly randomly awarded penalties allowing Billy Twelvetrees and Laharrague to exchange place kicks, added to a drop goal by the latter, to make it 6-all half-way through the first period. It is the author’s personal view that to complain about the standard of the officials at a rugby match, especially when one’s chosen team is involved, is to be disingenuous towards the opposition. Cries of “we would’ve scored if the ref had played that advantage”, or “it’s one set of rules of for us at the breakdown, another for the opposition”, and the like, have the purists squirming and labelling us no better than Alec Ferguson or Arsene Wenger. I therefore frame my criticism of Mr. Fitzgibbons and his officials in the mitigating context of a call for consistency. Three clear high tackles from Perpignan players in the first twenty minutes went unpunished, each apparent offence seeming to be more brutal and cynical than the last, and each drawing an increasingly verbal discontent from the Welford Road crowd. When Leicester were pinged for the same offence moments after Craig Newby had been thrown to the ground from a choke-hold, some of the occupants of the Crumbie Terrace were ready to jump the advertising hoardings. All that said, Steve Mafi was lucky to receive no greater sanction than a penalty against his team, when some of the terrace dwellers admitted that by the letter of the laws he deserved a straight red card for what appeared to be an ugly spear tackle, leaving the Perpignan right wing clutching his shoulder in obvious discomfort. And so the conspiracy theory was dispelled, the crowd realising that Mr. Fitzgibbons’ crimes against Leicester were no more a malicious act to derail red, green and white ambitions in the Heineken Cup this year than the random scatter of innocent inconsistency.

After half an hour the game suddenly threw off its heavy winter cloak and sprang to life, almost without assistance from the officials. A characteristic line break from Leicester captain Geordan Murphy never quite put him out of reach of grasping French tentacles. He was hauled down 15 yards out, all Perpignan hands on deck. Illegally. David Mele, the French scrum half, was too busy lavishing Mr. Fitzgibbons’ nearest ear with his own yelled interpretation of the laws to notice the quickly taken tap-penalty behind his back, and Alesana Tuilagi was over under the posts. Twelvetrees’ conversion made it 13-6 and normal Welford Road service appeared to have been resumed. Suddenly everyone – apart from our vocal Catalan visitors – was a little less cold and the spirit of Christmas was a little more tangible. Another Laharrague penalty on the stroke of half time made it 13–9 at the break although it appeared that the home team were beginning to get on top.

But Perpignan were feisty and bristling with defiance, no doubt galvanised by their success the previous week, and had clearly not come all the way to the freezing midlands only to roll over as they had done in 2002 and 2009. They came out at the start of the second half playing with a little less fluency and a little more fire than they did at the start of the first, a combination which took the increasingly dislikeable Mele over in the right-hand corner after a surging Perpignan break. The accompanying conversion, tempered by another Twelvetrees conversion, made it 16-all with half an hour to go – perfectly poised for another an exciting, swashbuckling Leicester triumph, you might have thought.

Further penalties took us to 19-all with about ten minutes left before Rimas Alvarez Kairelis, the Perpignan lock, appeared to have given the game away for his team. Spates of ‘handbags’ nowadays very rarely spill over into anything more. Cameras are everywhere and players are all too aware of the likelihood of sanctions for acts of violence or retribution. Games that simmer with a whiff of unchecked testosterone rarely flare up into the kinds of bar-room brawls that we used to see in the Heineken cup even as recently as ten years ago. The kinds of punch-ups enjoyed by Brive and Pontypridd, or Australia and the 1989 Lions, now live only in infamy, most would say for the better of the sport. It was therefore in the midst of a lot of shouting, angry faces, puffed-out chests and pushing and shoving that Alvarez Kairelis must have thrown a genuine punch – witnessed by Mr. Fitzgibbons – and caught a yellow card for his troubles. The infringement gave Leicester a long penalty shot that Twelvetrees landed. At 22–19 with seven minutes to go and a man up, the optimistic among us could have been forgiven for believing the four points to be the bag. Leicester exploited the man advantage to give Twelvetrees a further two penalty kicks, one was easy and one much harder, both of which he missed, and Leicester’s lead began to appear rather more fragile. Realising their chance to ambush the Tigers in their own lair, Perpignan refused to stick to the pre-ordained script, and battered their way downfield in the manner the home crowd are used to seeing their own heroes do in search of a last-gasp victory. Yet another infringement on the deck gave Laharrague a difficult penalty shot nearly 50 yards out that nobody now believed he would miss. And miss he didn’t to make it 22-all.

By the time the kick-off was taken, a mere 40 seconds remained on the stadium clock, just enough time for the hometown heroes to snatch victory from the icy maw of the dreaded draw. Twelvetrees’ high, hanging kick-off teased the imagination and time stood still for just a moment. Suddenly it was a sunny May afternoon all over again in south-west London…Leicester are two points down…a high, hanging kick-off…Hamilton catches…feeds to Hipkiss…he thunders through a high tackle and scores under the posts…and…THUD – we’re back at Welford Road in December as the ball tumbles into the cold, hard turf. The precious bauble flashes tantalisingly through Leicester players’ fingers, only to fall to eager French paws. Nineteen thousand faces hang in momentary anguish before le ballon is hoofed into the stands. The collective sigh of disappointment is the cue for the final whistle and for both sets of supporters to trudge back out into the winter cold, musing over how their team could have taken more from such a close game.