World in Union: Aviva Premiership round up week 2

Thank you to our friends at the Aviva Premiership for the round up and pictures. Aviva Insurance, competitive prices not available on comparison price sites.

 

Leicester Tigers director of rugby Richard Cockerill believes there is huge room for improvement despite seeing his side continue their perfect start to the Aviva Premiership season with a bonus point victory over Worcester Warriors at Welford Road.

 

England centre Manu Tuilagi ran in two early spectacular tries for the Tigers while additional scores from Fijian wing Vereniki Goneva, Graham Kitchener and a penalty try, as well as nine points from the boot of Toby Flood handed the nine-time champions a 34-26 win.

 

Cockerill's men didn't have things all their own way however and the Warriors refused to throw in the towel, hitting back through tries from David Lemi and Alex Grove but they returned home with nothing having failed to get within seven points.

The Tigers sit second in the table with ten points, having cruised past newcomers London Welsh last weekend and it's a far cry from last season when Leicester struggled at the start of the season with a host of players on World Cup duty - but Cockerill is still not completely satisfied.

"It's a perfect start if you look at the table but it was far from perfect performance-wise," said Cockerill.
"We did some really good things and we are creating a huge amount of opportunities but we also turned the ball over too much. We just played ourselves into trouble. It's easily fixed but our mindset needs to be better than that.

"Every time we recycled the ball properly there were opportunities for us. But we were sloppy at times and put ourselves under pressure and that cost us points. We need to be better than that."

Elsewhere, defending champions Harlequins maintained their place at the top of the Aviva Premiership with a thumping six-try victory over London Welsh as lock George Robson and wing Ugo Monye ran in two tries apiece.

Centre George Lowe and replacement Ben Botica also got in on the act with fly-half Nick Evans pulling the strings, and Quins director of rugby Conor O'Shea paid tribute to the in-demand New Zealander.
"You can't score six tries to nil and not be relatively happy. To get off to two bonus-point wins is a nice way to start the season," said O'Shea.

"Everyone at Harlequins wants Nick Evans and hopefully he will still be here. But we will do our talking behind the scenes."

Meanwhile, Gloucester Rugby won a thrilling encounter with London Irish as fly-half Freddie Burns was the star of the show, kicking 25 points at the Madejski Stadium.

"Freddie [Burns] was fantastic," said Cherry & Whites director of rugby Nigel Davies. "He's still young although he appears to have been around for a long time. He's really enthusiastic and it's great to work with somebody like that."

Saracens kept up their pursuit of the leading pack as ex-Sale fly-half Charlie Hodgson ruined his old club's first match at their new home, kicking 18 points in a 23-16 win at the Salford City Stadium.

On Sunday Luther Burrell scored his first Premiership try in Northampton Saints colours as his new side survived two comebacks by Exeter Chiefs to edge to a narrow 24-21 win - their second of the season.

And rugby league convert Kyle Eastmond scored his first ever Aviva Premiership try as Bath Rugby sealed a 30-23 win over London Wasps, Nicky Robinson nicking a late bonus point for the visitors.