On Saturday night, Leicester Tigers claimed a bonus point victory against the HollywoodbetsSharks in front of a roaring crowd at Mattioli Woods Welford Road in the Investec Champions Cup.
After a humiliating loss in the Premiership to Sale Sharks last weekend, Michael Cheika’s men bounced back with a thumping win over the Hollywoodbets Sharks, claiming a bonus-point victory to take them to second place in their pool.
The Sharks will be frustrated with their mistakes, feeling perhaps that they should have made more of a showing in front of their travelling fans. Leicester, on the other hand, will be pleased with the way they controlled the game, giving them confidence leading into next weekend’s fixture against Bristol.
If things weren’t bad enough already for the travelling South African side, Eduan Keyter found himself on the wrong side of fortune midway through the first half, allowing Ollie Hassell-Collins to score Tigers’ third try in dramatic fashion. The winger appeared to have incredibly stopped the ball from exiting the field following a Leicester penalty, but instead palmed the ball straight into the hands of the oncoming Hassell-Collins.
Check the video below:
“It was an absolute gift!” 😱
Eduan Keyter makes a massive mistake and Ollie Hassell-Collins is there to score @LeicesterTigers‘ third try of the half 🐯#InvestecChampionsCup pic.twitter.com/RgUyccK0MH
— Premier Sports (@PremSportsTV) December 14, 2024
Leicester Tigers head coach Michael Cheika reacted to the Investec Champions Cup home victory over Hollywoodbets Sharks post-match.
“I thought we started off looking for a bit too much. We didn’t set the game up how we wanted to. We’ve been looking at our attack a bit more and sometimes when you do that you can almost go for too much but that’s a process you have to go through to then pull yourself back and say ‘ok, this is what works’.
“We quickly got a handle on what was required around the physicality and intensity of the game. Once we started to understand that we got value from it: the maul try, Ollie Hassell-Collins’ try. Some might say that was lucky there but it’s not luck because you’ve got to chase. If we had had another person there we’d have had double the luck.
“In the second half, I thought we defended quite well. Not much went our way and I thought there was a bit of craziness around the ruck but we defended well and it was important not to give away a bonus point out there.”
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