Leicester 12 Ospreys 6: Flood kicks Leicester to victory

Welford Road was a try-free zone yesterday. Blissfully, it was equally free of the celebrity circus currently bending the game out of shape. The raddled old stadium was full to overflowing and there were plenty of national selectors dotted around the grandstand, but without a Danny Cipriani or a Jonny Wilkinson – or even a Gavin Henson, who should have been there, but wasn't - to transport the man and woman in the street into paroxysms of voyeuristic sporting pleasure, was there really any point to it all? There were a number of points, actually, the main one being Toby Flood.

The third, and least obsessively lionised, of England's international-class No 10s played quite beautifully until a deteriorating hamstring injury got the better of him just shy of the hour. He accounted for Leicester's entire points haul by kicking four goals, three of which would have tested Wilkinson to the limit; he stretched the Ospreys' hard-tackling midfield with some sophisticated little half-breaks straight out of the Stephen Larkham handbook; he threw perfectly weighted long passes off either hand. Sacrilegious as it sounds, it was difficult to imagine anyone managing the show with more authority, Danny and Jonny included.

"Let's put it this way: we're very pleased to have Toby playing outside-half at this club," said the beaten-up warrior Martin Corry when pressed on the virtues of Flood, as opposed to the other two. "He has an air of confidence, not arrogance, about him. He knows what he can do, and today he did everything. You take notice of a player's skills, naturally, but as a captain, you also look at the way a player feels about his team. He was struggling with his injury out there, but he was willing stay on the field and fight for us. That was the great thing for me."

After opening the scoring on eight minutes following a fearsome rumble into the Ospreys' 22 by Marcos Ayerza and Jordan Crane – the intensity of the Leicester pack's first-half performance was nothing short of frightening – Flood regularly hit the spot from a range of distances between 47 and 51 metres. Indeed, he did not miss, or look like missing. Had he, rather than the less precise Johne Murphy, been in possession of the ball down the right-hand side on two occasions either side of the half-hour mark, Leicester would have been over the hills and far away by the interval. Unfortunately for them, Murphy threw two try-scoring passes straight into the advertising hoardings.

This profligacy could have cost the Midlanders, for their visitors had a vastly greater say in matters after the break. Indeed, they earned themselves a couple of shots at victory at the last knockings, first when Tommy Bowe set sail on a kick-and-chase raid deep into Leicester territory and then when they chose to scrummage a penalty five metres short of the Tigers' line. Unfortunately for Ospreys, the Leicester half-back Harry Ellis forced Filo Tiatia into a fumble at the base of the set-piece. Ben Woods secured the loose ball on the floor and the tidying-up chores were duly completed.

It might be said that Henson, dropped from the side after throwing a supersized strop and missing training during the week, would have won the game for the Welsh region had he been on the field. Shane Williams had dropped a goal in first-half stoppage time to give his side an interest in the game, but James Hook missed two penalties of the 45-metre variety that would have made a real fight of it. Hook is not the greatest when it comes to the Big Bertha kicks. Henson is among the world's best.

"It isn't about one player," said Sean Holley, the Ospreys coach, when invited to justify Henson's exclusion for a fixture of this magnitude. "In any environment, you have a set of rules and values. If an employee steps outside of that, he is dealt with accordingly. Anyway, I thought our centre partnership [the unsung Andrew Bishop in the inside position, with Bowe, a converted wing, outside him] was fantastic. The case is closed."

Holley's assertion that it was a "smash-and-grab win gone missing" was not unreasonable, for Ospreys could easily have pinched it. But the hosts would have felt seriously sore about life had victory slipped away from them. Julian White had a riotous time of it at close quarters – in fact, this may have been the former England prop's most potent contribution in two years – and with Crane impressing two watching red-rose coaches, John Wells and Mike Ford, with his physicality in attack and defence, there was more than a hint of the Leicester of old about this performance.

This traditional forward aggression, combined with Flood's ability to get the Midlanders playing in space as well as in the darkened recesses, could usher in a positive new era for the two-times European champions. The outside-half may even find himself recognised in the street, perish the thought.

"I'm not one to shout about what I do," he said. "If you make too much noise at a club like this, you might get yourself shot in training." Cipriani can therefore count himself lucky. When he made too much noise during a Wasps session last week, he suffered nothing worse than a punch on the nose.

Scorers: Leicester: Penalties: Flood 4. Ospreys: Penalty: Hook. Drop goal: Williams.

Leicester: G Murphy; M Smith (A Tuilagi 59), D Hipkiss, A Mauger, J Murphy; T Flood (D Hougaard 59), H Ellis; M Ayerza, B Kayser (G Chuter 64), J White (D Cole 69), M Corry (capt, R Blaze 78), B Kay (M Wentzel 71), T Croft, B Woods, J Crane.

Ospreys: L Byrne; S Williams, T Bowe, A Bishop, N Walker (D Biggar 51); J Hook, R Wells (R Webb 75); P James (D Jones 62), R Hibbard (H Bennett 44), A Jones, A W Jones (I Gough 68), I Evans, J Thomas (F Tiatia 52), M Holah, R Jones (capt).

Referee: A Rolland (Ireland).

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