Heineken Cup - Leicester Tigers v Bath (Saturday 11th April)
Published: 08/04/2009
Leicester Tigers v Bath Rugby
Current Form
- Leicester sit top of the Guinness Premiership, having won 5 of their last 6 matches including an impressive win last week at home to Sale, despite playing over 60 minutes of the game with 14 men. Under acting head coach Richard Cockerill, Leicester have established a free flowing style which contradicts the typical forward-orientated mentality which has previously dominated the Leicester game plan.
- Bath have also had a good season but don’t come into this game in the best of form, having lost 3 of their last 6 games.
- Both teams won 4 of their 6 pool games, with Leicester winning all 3 of their home fixtures.
History
- Previous winners Leicester Tigers and Bath meet in the Heineken Cup for only the second time ever.
- The one time they’ve met was the 2006 quarter final in which Bath edged out Leicester 15-12, despite playing with 13 men for the last 10 minutes.
Trends and Trivia
- In this competition Leicester have a much better try scoring record with 23, 10 more than Bath. Leicester have scored the majority of their tries in the first half, where as Bath have scored just 3 in the first half.
- Defensively Leicester also edge it, conceding just 5 tries, compared to Bath’s 8. Strangely out of Leicester’s 5 conceded tries, 3 have come from forwards, where as no forward has breached the Bath line as of yet.
- Johne Murphy has the best tries to matches ratio in this year’s competition, having scored in each of his 4 appearances. In the top 20 try scorers Leicester have 5 representatives – Murphy on 4, with Mauger, Hamilton, Flood and Crane each with 3. Bath however don’t feature at all in the list.
- Toby Flood is second in the top points scorers list, just 4 short of first placed Ben Blair. Flood has the third best points to matches ratio for Leicester in Heineken Cup history, behind Leicester legends Tim Stimpson and Joel Stransky.
- Bath have played just one player 21 or under in this year’s competition, Leicester have fielded 3.
- The referee for Saturday’s game is Alan Lewis. So far Lewis has only given just 1 card in the 6 games he has taken control of. In the pool stages both teams had just 2 players sin binned.
- 6 Leicester players have started all of the Heineken Cup games so far, compared to 4 for Bath. Included in this select 10 are the Bath half-backs and Leicester’s England trio of Toby Flood, Tom Croft and Julian White.
