Gloucester lose home record

Gloucester's unbeaten home record, stretching back some 17 months and across 22 matches, has been ended by Leicester, the Tigers scoring a 20-13 Guinness Premiership victory at Kingsholm.

A fiercely contested clash resulted between the top two sides, with fringe players taking advantage of both Six Nations call-ups and injuries.

And it was Leicester's greater strength in depth which ultimately told, with their opponents forced to enlist several players - Adam Balding, Jack Adams, Mark Foster and Jack Forster - who had barely featured for the club during the current campaign.

Indeed, such was Gloucester's plight that James Bailey was deployed at full-back, a position the winger had not filled since his amateur days.

Tigers fly-half Andy Goode immediately exploited the situation with a high punt that resulted in Bailey easily being bundled off the ball.

Nevertheless, Gloucester tried to move forward, with James Simpson-Daniel to the fore and their pack gaining good momentum as they gained Leicester yards.

Costly

However, not every facet of their game was under control: Gloucester's line-outs proved costly and the home side also found it difficult to break the last line of defence.

The Tigers eventually opened the scoring six minutes before half time, with England Saxons captain Jordan Crane giving Goode time to fire a long pass away from the bunched defence through Tom Varndell and John Murphy before Ollie Smith touched down.

Goode converted and the crowd then vented their collective spleen on referee Tony Spreadbury, who responded by sin-binning Gloucester lock Will James for stamping and Tigers flanker Ben Herring for killing the ball.

A Willie Walker penalty left Gloucester 7-3 behind at the interval but they went ahead eight minutes into the second half when hooker Olivier Azam received a pass from Peter Buxton before going over from a five-metre penalty line-out.

Walker converted, but then sent a long-range penalty wide before Goode was able to level the scores with his first penalty.

The pair traded points before a break from Aaron Mauger through midfield sent Ayoola Erinle storming over for Leicester's second converted try in the 68th minute.

Desperate efforts

Gloucester then almost came back when Simpson-Daniel took Walker's soft kick towards the posts but he was instead held up by Christophe Laussucq.

In their increasingly desperate efforts to maintain their home record, a quickly tapped penalty by Gareth Cooper caught Herring out and he was sent off for his second yellow card.

The Cherry and Whites could not find a way through; however, the one point they claimed was enough to hold on to the top spot.