Leicester bounce back from successive defeats to beat Gloucester in important Aviva Premiership win

Leicester 24 Gloucester 10: The Tigers had never lost their opening three games of a Premiership campaign and ended their poor start after a dominant opening 40-minutes

Leicester dominated the first-half against Gloucester (Getty)

A pair of early tries by England scrum-half Ben Youngs paved the way for Leicester’s first victory of the season, as Gloucester continued a winless run at Welford Road that stretches back 10 years.

Leicester had never lost their first three Premiership matches of the season and having been beaten at home by Bath and away to Northampton in the opening fortnight, while conceding 38 first-half points in those two matches, they quickly showed their raging intent to reverse those worrying patterns.

They came into this contest second-bottom of the Premiership, but Leicester had their opening try with nine minutes gone. With Tigers’ fly-half George Ford directing the traffic, the Gloucester lock Jeremy Thrush conceded a penalty when he was pinned after a tackle on the galloping Ellis Genge. As Ben Youngs tapped to himself in the shadow of the posts, the two nearest defenders Lewis Ludlow and Josh Hohneck could not stop him, and Ford converted for 7-0.

In the absence of the heavy-hitting Manu Tuilagi, his centre partner Matt Toomua picked up the cudgel for Leicester with a couple of splattering tackles. And a penalty against Gloucester for holding on after the second of them led to Youngs nabbing his second try six minutes after the first, sniping from a line-out drive at the left corner, and Ford converted again.

Leicester wing Nick Malouf was next to go over, as the Australian sevens expert was sent clear by sharp passes from Ford and Telusa Veainu. And the third successful conversion by Ford - who was being watched by his dad Mike, soon to take up a post with Dallas Griffins in the USA – made the scoreline 21-0 with 22 minutes played. The euphoria of Gloucester’s opening-night win over Exeter two weeks ago was fading rapidly.

Toomua’s match ended early after he took an accidental boot to the head from Charlie Sharples, who was making his first start of the season for Gloucester, while the visitors’ fly-half duties were in the hands of Billy Twelvetrees, once of Leicester, after the late withdrawal of Billy Burns.

Youngs scored an early brace for Leicester (Getty)

And Twelvetrees was grateful to add the conversion to a heartening try for Gloucester, 95 seconds into the second half. The Cherry and Whites’ scrum-half and captain Willi Heinz crabbed right to left before he launched loosehead prop Josh Hohneck past an interception attempt by Youngs’s hooker brother, Tom.

A penalty by Twelvetrees trimmed the Leicester lead to 21-10, but a second scrum penalty of the match conceded by Gloucester altered the momentum, and overall the visitors were badly undermined by a glut of turnovers.

For Leicester, their loosehead prop Genge was in blistering form with ball in hand, in front of the watching England scrum coach Neal Hatley, and one charge paved the way for a Tigers penalty in the Gloucester 22 and a marvellous attacking position going into the final quarter.

But the Tigers line-out faltered at the crucial moment, with the first-choice locks Graham Kitchener and Dom Barrow missing injured, and another possible choice, Ed Slater, now wearing Gloucester colours on his first start since moving to Kingsholm as part of the swap deal that took England wing Jonny May to Welford Road.

Matt Scott hobbled off injured (Getty)

Leicester turned aggressive defence into attack as a brilliant rip of the ball from Jason Woodward by Toomua’s replacement Mat Tait led to a penalty in front kicked by Ford for 24-10 with 63 minutes played.

And more bad news on the injury front came as Gloucester’s Scotland centre Matt Scott hobbled off, while his side’s penalty count ticked up to a damaging 15 with eight minutes remaining.

Leicester had several more shots at nailing a bonus-point try – the first of them from a five-metre scrum after Gloucester’s No.8 Ruan Ackermann was driven over his own line.

But the initial wave of attack came to nothing and the same was true of a mass maul after Ford kicked a penalty to touch as the clock ticked past 80 minutes.

Malouf crossed the line for the home team (Getty)

There was still time for one more penalty kicked for a Leicester line-out by Ford, but in keeping with an afternoon full of errors, an overthrow by Harry Thacker allowed Gloucester off the hook, with no further scoring.

"We left plenty of points out there," said Matt O'Connor, the Leicester head coach. "But I thought we started the game brilliantly and the intensity and the accuracy in the first 25 minutes was exactly where we wanted to be."

Scorers

Leicester Tigers: tries: B Youngs 2, Malouf; conversions: Ford 3; penalty: Ford

Gloucester: try: Hohneck; conversion: Twelvetrees; penalty: Twelvetrees

Leicester Tigers: T Veainu; N Malouf, M Smith, M Toomua (rep M Tait 33rd min), J May; G Ford, B Youngs (S Harrison 73); E Genge (G Bateman 73), T Youngs (capt; H Thacker 52), D Cole (L Muilpola 60), H Wells, J Maksymiw (V Mapapalangi 43), M Williams (D Ryan 68), L Hamilton, S Kalamafoni.

Gloucester: J Woodward; C Sharples, H Trinder (L Evans 46), M Scott (H Purdy 68), O Thorley; B Twelvetrees, W Heinz (capt; B Vellacott 56); J Hohneck (V Rapava Ruskin 14-23, 56), M Matu’u (R Hibbard 56), J Afoa (G Denman 68), E Slater, J Thrush (T Savage 66-75), L Ludlow (F Clarke 66), J Rowan, R Ackermann.

Referee: C Maxwell-Keys (RFU).