Premiership: Gloucester 5-26 Leicester - Tigers up to third with fourth straight win

Ben Youngs scored his 41st try to cement Leicester's sixth straight win over Gloucester

Leicester beat Premiership play-off rivals Gloucester at Kingsholm to move third with a fourth straight win.

Superb scramble defence from both sides kept the game scoreless in a nip-and-tuck first half.

Mike Brown's try finally broke the deadlock for Tigers after 54 minutes, and Julian Montoya's close-range score opened up a 12-0 lead.

Jonny May cut the deficit, but Ben Youngs crossed, as did Jasper Wiese to seal a bonus point with the final play.

Leicester's late show meant they retained the Ed Slater Cup, the second match in the series played for the lock who skippered both sides and was diagnosed with motor neurone disease last year.

In the race for the play-offs, defending champions Leicester moved above Northampton on points difference with three home matches left, while Gloucester remain eighth, nine points outside the top four.

The early exchanges saw Tigers back row Hanro Liebenberg knock on inches from the line, and Harry Potter made a vital tackle at the other end to deny Gloucester the opening try.

Matt Scott then burst through the Cherry and White defence, but knocked on in the tackle, five metres out, in an open first quarter played at a high intensity.

It was the hosts' turn to pile on the pressure after Potter's 27th-minute yellow card for a deliberate knock-on, and they looked certain to score as they forced a series of penalties.

Seb Atkinson was dragged down by Wiese just short of the line, and Ruan Ackermann was then held up as tigerish Leicester defence somehow kept out the hosts.

The TMO ruled out a Liebenberg score for a double movement after the break, but the wait for points finally ended with 25 minutes left when former England full-back Brown squirmed over from close-range after Leicester patiently worked the phases.

Montoya extended the lead soon after, spotting the gap and crossing after a well-worked rolling maul.

But they were pegged back to 12-5 when Tigers old boy May sniped around the corner to touch down in the corner.

However, the game changed on 67 minutes when Gloucester skipper Lewis Ludlow was sin-binned for a deliberate knock-on, and four minutes later Youngs surged over to clinch the win.

An offside May was also shown a yellow card to leave Gloucester down to 13 men for a few minutes and Wiese squeezed over for a last-gasp try and what could prove a crucial bonus point at the end of the season.

Gloucester head coach George Skivington:

"It's a big loss for us and makes it extremely difficult, but I don't think we should be talking about the play-offs but more about playing better.

"We wanted to make a statement for Ed [Slater] and I think we did that in terms of physicality, effort and work-rate, but we just weren't clinical enough.

"I thought we played really well in the first half and actually created more than I thought we would.

"We didn't see the ball in the second half or get a foothold and the boys they brought on really made an impact. We made mistakes and they punished us, which we didn't do to them in the first half."

Leicester Tigers interim head coach Richard Wigglesworth:

"We will take loads of positives from that performance, especially our heroic defence in the second quarter which allowed us to go in at half-time all-square when we should have been behind.

"We were then able to address a number of first-half issues to enable us to dominate the second half.

"I'm surprised no kicks at goal were taken from penalties but they backed their driving maul to score and we managed to keep that out.

"We just came to win the game but when the late opportunity came for a bonus point, we were able to take it and hopefully the three home games to come will be of benefit to us."

Gloucester: Evans, May, Seabrook, Atkinson, Thorley, Carreras, Meehan, Rapava-Ruskin, Blake, Gotovtsev, Clarke, Alemanno, Reid, Ludlow, Ackermann.

Replacements: Walker, Elrington, Ford-Robinson, Jordan, Tuisue, Chapman, Twelvetrees, Hearle.

Sin-bin: Ludlow (68).

Leicester: Brown, Potter, Scott, Porter, Simmons, Pollard, Youngs, West, Montoya, Heyes, Wells, Snyman, Liebenberg, Cracknell, Wiese.

Replacements: Clare, Cronin, Hurd, Henderson, Martin, Ilione, Whiteley, Atkinson.

Sin-bin: Potter (27).

Referee: Ian Tempest

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