Titans mauled by Tigers

By Roth Admin
August 19 2004

Rotherham Titans suffered their heaviest defeat of the season today, losing 75 – 13 to an inspired Leicester Tigers. The Tigers played some wonderful, fast-flowing rugby and at times it appeared to be men against boys. Rotherham must be desperate for their ill-fated season to finish.

Although not wanting to take anything away from the hosts, this was by far and away Rotherham’s poorest performance of the season. At times Rotherham’s tackling was either non existent or a shambles. It’s been a long old season for the Titans and nobody up until now has given them a hammering, but tiredness, injuries and an in form Leicester finally caught up with Rotherham today.

In a dramatic first half Leicester ran in eight tries to Rotherham’s one. The bonus point was wrapped up after just 22 minutes. Leicester hooker George Chuter claimed a hat trick of tries, Andy Goode chipped in with another two and Neil Back, Jaco van der Westhuyzen and Geordan Murphy helped themselves to one apiece. All but one was converted by Tigers full back Andy Goode. Rotherham’s first half try came from outside centre Jon Pritchard on 26 minutes – Phil Jones missed the conversion. However Jones did convert an 8th minute penalty.

Coming out for the 2nd period and trailing 54 – 8, there was talk of Leicester putting 100 points on Rotherham. To be fair to the Titans, although the did loose the 2nd half 21-5 they never stopped trying and they did score the final try of the match with a well worked try that started within their own half and involved several pairs of hands before Jason Keyter popped up on the left wing to go over near the corner. Jon Benson pushed the difficult conversion across the face of the uprights.

Leicester scored three tries in the 2nd half through Martin Corry, Daryl Gibson and John Holtby. Once again Andy Goode as on hand to convert all three and bring his match tally up to 30 points.

Although it made no difference to the score line, all three match officials had a bad game and how Austin Healey remained on the pitch after a very dangerous high tackle on Jason keyter, I just don’t know. After the game, both Ross Reynolds, (Rotherham’s new Head Coach) and Geoff Wappett (his assistant) agreed that Healey should have been sent off. When Leicester Tigers head coach John Wells was asked for his view of the incident, in true Arsene Wenger style, he simply replied, “I did not see it!”

So on to the final game of the campaign and Ross Reynolds stated that he will be taking a more hands on approach this coming week. Let’s just hope that he’s remembered to bring his box of miracles with him – he may just need them.

Good luck Ross.

Final Score: Leicester Tigers 75 – Rotherham Titans 13