Leicester\u2019s director of rugby, Geoff Parling, was frustrated that his side failed to capitalise from a strong position to lose to Leinster at Mattioli Woods Welford Road.<\/p>\n
Despite a spirited effort against error-ridden opponents, the hosts came away with nothing and remain pointless at the bottom of Pool 3 after their opening two fixtures.<\/p>\n
Leicester earned a surprising 15-6 lead at the break, thanks partly to a scorching 75 metre kick-and-chase try by wing Adam Radwan. But a missed penalty from Billy Searle at the start of the second half and a soft try for Jamison Gibson-Park shifted the momentum and ultimately \u2013 despite being far from their best \u2013 the Irish province were deserved winners. Gibson-Park and Dan Sheehan scored Leinster\u2019s tries, with Harry Byrne kicking three penalties and a conversion. Sam Prendergast also added a conversion.<\/p>\n
Radwan and his fellow wing Ollie Hassell-Collins crossed over for Leicester\u2019s tries as Searle added a penalty and a conversion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud of the effort as our defence was outstanding, the best performance of the season in that area, but I\u2019m frustrated as the game was there for us,\u201d Parling said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people had written us off before the game and it would have been an incredible day had we won as Leinster haven\u2019t lost a European pool game for four years. Going toe to toe with them gives our fans hope and belief for the future but we need to double down on our accuracy.<\/p>\n
The way the competition is set up, we are still in with a chance of progressing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jamison Gibson-Park touches down in the corner for Leinster\u2019s first try. Photograph: Ashley Western\/Colorsport\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
It was a different story in the Irish camp as they now have nine points from their opening two fixtures and that should already be enough for them to progress to the next round of the competition.<\/p>\n
Leinster had to cope with the loss before kick-off of prop Tadhg Furlong, and head coach Leo Cullen said: \u201cI\u2019m very pleased how we stuck at it, although if we had taken our opportunities, we would have made it easier for ourselves. It\u2019s an incredibly tough place to come and although we played with great intensity, they were very dogged and made life difficult for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a lot of early disruption with Tadhg feeling unwell on leaving the hotel and then losing two players [to injury] in the first 11 minutes. We then had a try harshly ruled out but we showed great composure even though we were trailing 15-6 at half-time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leicester\u2019s director of rugby, Geoff Parling, was frustrated that his side failed to capitalise from a strong position…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-629541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115710426064687812","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}