Bath's Kyle Eastmond reminds England while injuries maul Leicester Tigers

Eastmond excelled for Bath on Saturday

Kyle Eastmond scored one of Bath’s five tries in the club’s record 45-0 victory over Leicester (GETTY IMAGES)

Two past masters of Bath’s midfield creativity ran the rule over Kyle Eastmond during his club’s record 45-0 thrashing of Leicester on Saturday. Mike Catt, now an England assistant coach, kept his thoughts to himself, naturally, but Jerry Guscott, merely an interested spectator these days, purred in admiration over his successor in the No 12 jersey. “Kyle’s my favourite player at the minute,” said Guscott, after watching the match in the company of Bath’s owner, Bruce Craig. “The way he sees space, and his footwork, is brilliant.”

Eastmond applied the finish to an early contender for try of the season – as the third of Bath’s five in their biggest win in 101 years of facing the Tigers – and continually outwitted an error-ridden Leicester team undermined by injuries and unavailability. It was a timely effort by the former St Helens rugby league player, with England naming a squad for the autumn Tests on 22 October, and another league convert, Sam Burgess, arriving at Bath next month with an eye, possibly, on Eastmond’s position.

“I didn’t know anybody was watching,” said Eastmond, whose debut tour with England to Argentina last year went much better than this year’s in New Zealand, when he was substituted at half-time of the final Test. “I don’t think about anything else but playing well for Bath. I don’t think about Sam Burgess, I don’t think about anyone. [The try] was a great team effort. The forwards were awesome. They deserve all the credit. But, if I’m honest, the backs are quite tight, so we won’t be buying them drinks.”

Leicester were “nilled” for the first time since a European Cup match in Ulster in January 2004. This was their first loss of the season and they had their loose-head prop Marcos Ayerza away with Argentina, plus 14 injury absentees. Manu Tuilagi (groin) may be fit to resume against London Irish this Saturday, but the situation worsened with Niall Morris (ankle) and England hooker Tom Youngs (shoulder) taken to hospital, while the head coach, Richard Cockerill, said there were concerns over a series of head knocks to their England lock Geoff Parling, who suffered blurred vision.

Bath’s dominant tight forwards will find Northampton and Saracens tougher nuts to crack in the next fortnight but, with three wins from three, they are on top of the Premiership and the head coach, Mike Ford, paid tribute to his assistant Neal Hatley’s work on defence. “There’s a clip from the second half I’ll be playing over and over to the players,” Ford said, “where we keep knocking Leicester backwards and backwards. We were pretty relentless.”