No excuse for this one. The internationals are back and they had as much as ball as they could ever have won against anyone, even here, but Leicester managed to throw away a 17-point lead with quarter of an hour remaining to be held to a draw.
A finely worked try for Adam Thompstone in the 66th minute and an opportunist one with two minutes to go for Matt Garvey, who had charged down Jeremy Staunton's lazy clearance, earned London Irish a share of the points. Toby Flood had a chance to snatch them back, but he pushed his drop-goal attempt wide with the last kick of the game.
If points were awarded for possession, Leicester would have annihilated Irish. According to this observer's (fallible) count, Leicester won 20 lineouts to the visitors' four, and the referee blew for penalties in their favour 15 times against six.
Yet they did not manage to cross the try line until the 62nd minute, and when they did it was in a bizarre fashion. Tom Croft lunged for the line, but the ball was kneed out of his hand, only for Horacio Agulla to follow up for the try that seemed to have put the game to bed at 24-7. Crucially, as it turned out, Flood missed the conversion. It was actually Leicester's second try of the afternoon, the first being the classic staple of the team with more possession than they know what to do with – the penalty try, awarded inevitably at a fast-advancing scrum. Richard Cockerill complained afterwards at his side's decision-making, and it is true that they might have swung the ball around a bit much on a cold, damp day for a side with such dominance at the set piece.
But how they were only 12 points ahead at the hour mark is a bit of a mystery – they were playing well up front and far from disastrously behind. Irish lived on the edge of the off-side line, hence that penalty count, and when Leicester composure started to unravel in the final minutes they were well-placed to take advantage.
When Irish did manage to get their hands on the ball, which happened about three times in that first hour or so, they looked dangerous. Theirs was the game's first try, scored with their first bit of possession, in the 16th minute. Shontayne Hape scored it, put over by the excellent Jebb Sinclair. Then came that extraordinary comeback in the last 15 minutes with the game seemingly lost. Thompstone's try was the culmination of a lengthy passage of precision probing. Then, after a soft penalty had been converted by Tom Homer, Garvey's was the result of Leicester carelessness. Homer nailed the difficult conversion, and Leicester's margin for error in the race for the play-offs had just narrowed again.
