Harlequins 30 Leicester Tigers 23: The Pendulum Swings and Quins Become Kings

Seemingly from nowhere can appear momentum. Be it the flick of a wrist, the bounce of a ball or the slipping of a tackle, that most intangible of qualities, so conspicuous by its absence, can suddenly be a Sandy Park gust of wind, propelling you and your team mates forward. The basics become second-nature and the impossible becomes within reach. From momentum comes confidence and from confidence comes peak performance. But as easily as it appears, so too it slips away. After 106 unbeaten days came 80 resoundingly beaten minutes. The great recovery was over and Harlequins were champions of England.

(Source: Leicester Mercury)

What makes a victory? A reliable goal kicker? A mean defence? A solid set-peice? Sometimes  the statistics can tell one story and the flow of the game can tell another. George Ford had a higher kick success rate than Nick Evans; Harlequins missed more tackles, and; Leicester won more scrums on their own feed, yet they lost the game. They had more experience in finals, they had a stronger bench and they had beaten their opponents by a clear 10 points just a few weeks earlier. But title number 10 was not forthcoming.


The 43-33 victory over Quins at The Stoop could well have been Leicester's downfall. On that day, the Tigers went toe-to-toe with their opponents in terms of attacking rugby, throwing caution to the wind and reaping the rewards with 4 tries. From The Crumbie Terrace praised the team's ability at the time to be able to adapt to the game that their opponents were playing and not be over-reliant on one game plan. But Leicester found themselves 13 points adrift after just over half an hour that day and 7 points adrift with 15 minutes left. So whilst they may have gained confidence that they could meet Quins' style of play and raise it, Conor O'Shea's men would have sensed that on another day they could have inflicted a drubbing. That sense of promise was with every multi-coloured shirt on Saturday as they swept over every square of the Twickenham pitch like glitter.


Harlequins took their all-action style of play to another level. In ferocious heat they never allowed the tempo to drop and Leicester, with that recent victory in their minds, didn't see why they needed to slow it down either. Those archetypal Leicester moments in games - phase after phase of forwards punching holes, long rolling mauls, patient yet deliberate patterns - never happened. Perhaps weary from the pace of play or perhaps struggling to come to terms with the occasion, the usual platforms for victory melted away in the heat. Marcos Ayerza had an extremely uncomfortable afternoon against James Johnston, Dan Cole was sporadic against Joe Marler, Geoff Parling dropped of tackles and Thomas Waldrom had an error-strewn performance. Quins, with their devastating phases of inside balls, cute handling and offloads in the tackle, sucked Leicester defenders into the vortex time and time again until they could create room for their impressive backs to make metres.


Yet still, a mediocre Leicester performance was within 7 points of winning the Aviva Premiership. Richard Cockerill may receive some criticism for a game plan that didn't work on the day or for not using his stronger bench sooner, but he could have prepared for this game for an entire year and would not have predicted the basic errors that occurred. Multiple forward passes, back overrunning the ball carrier, restart pods in the complete wrong area, no.8s kicking to touch with more reliable kickers stood behind them, balls being dropped in rolling mauls under no pressure. This was not the all-conquering Leicester we saw over the past 106 days, but no player, no coach and no pundit will be able to definitively say why it happened. Harlequins were superb and at the same time Leicester were uncharacteristically clumsy.


For Leicester fans, a proud record of 8 consecutive finals is starting to be tarnished by the fact that only 3 of them have been won. Not only that, this Harlequins defeat now sits alongside the losses to Sale in 05/06 and Wasps in 07/08 as occasions where the Premiership Final has brought the worst out of the team.


The players and coaches have, however, achieved something remarkable in turning this near-disastorous season around in the space of a few months, and 80 forgettable minutes will not erase that. Unfortunately they will have to live with the feeling that they didn't perform to the best of their abilities, but then, that's sport. Momentum, the great pendulum, may swing your way but once it's there, it's only ever going back where it came.