And so it is the two grand old clubs of English rugby. Leicester will face off against Bath in thePremiershipfinal at Twickenham next Saturday – and the rest of us will have to check which century we are in.
Leicester, admittedly, have featured far more among the honours this millennium, which is to say at all, than their arch rivals from the West Country, who so dominated the 1980s and 1990s. But neither team, if you asked their hoariest old warriors, could pick a foe they would rather lock horns with on a no-doubt sunny afternoon at HQ.
This was a darker and more swirling affair at Welford Road. The Tigers seemed to haveSalein their pockets for half the match, but the visitors rallied midway through the second to level the scores with only 15 to play. Their tails seemed up.
Then came a flash of brilliance – not the first of the afternoon by any means – and all that darkness was pierced by a try fit to win a semi-final. The final minutes played out to Leicester’s beefiest squeezing out Manchester’s, as English rugby’s largest support bellowed them on. So familiar.
Neither of these two are known for their lightness of touch. Nor did they flourish any of it for much of the match, but let it be noted that the decisive breakthroughs owed everything to brilliance. Welford Road bade farewell to some of Leicester’s greatest servants, Dan Cole, Ben Youngs and captain Julián Montoya playing their last matches at the old place, but it was the newbies who won the match.
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Adam Radwan’s two first-half tries, his 10th and 11th in 10 matches, since his arrival midseason from Newcastle, were taken with stunning audacity, to earn Leicester a 10-point lead at the break. Then, come the hour, or at least the 68th minute, Izaia Perese, the Wallaby whose season has been so disrupted by injury, broke the newly imposed deadlock by bursting on to a pass from 40 metres out and skinning the Sale defence to seize the keys to Twickenham.
Sale, whose lightness tends to be supplied by George Ford, a previous champion with Leicester, had worked their way back into the match with a pair of penalties by the old maestro, either side of a try by Rob du Preez, put over by sweet interplay between the Curry twins and Ford again.
Du Preez has played every single minute of Sale’s Premiership campaign. How worthy a finalist he would have proven, but almost as soon as Ford’s third penalty of the match had levelled the scores at 16-16, Perese relit the fires of Welford Road. Sale pressed in the final knockings, having survived another siege, as the minutes ticked away. Luke Cowan-Dickie charged down the left touchline but he spilled the ball in a tackle by Freddie Steward with the clock deep in the red.
Leicester, fans and players alike, went berserk, but there was one last twist of drama to be endured. Steward’s head had collided with Cowan-Dickie’s in the tackle that dislodged the ball. One last séance by TMO was required.
It was decided that Steward, who was virtually prone on the floor when the tackle was made, could not conceivably have gone any lower. His arms were up in an attempt to make the tackle. But not as up as everybody else’s after the referee, Matt Carley, waved his to confirm once and for all the end of the match.
Some heroes of yore had the send-off they craved. But there is one last battle to come.