Aviva Premiership: Leicester Tigers ease past Newcastle Falcons

Niki Goneva: two tries for Leicester Tigers

Two tries from man of the match Vereniki Goneva helped Tigers move back into the play-off places despite the Falcons' fast start.

The Falcons started the brighter of the two sides, and were quick to put Leicester on the back foot. Lee Smith, playing his first game since converting from league, put the hosts inside with a long distance penalty early on.

Owen Williams briefly levelled the game at 3-3, but moments later Newcastle capitalised on their early dominance with a try from Noah Cato. Leicester's defensive line looked ragged and Phil Godman converted the score to make it 10-3.

That seemed to give Tigers the wake-up call they needed and they responded with another Williams penalty moments later.

England scrum-half Ben Youngs then made an excellent break only for Blaine Scally to drop a low pass when he could have been clean through.

Leicester continued to threaten and were unfortunate not to score when Marcos Ayerza failed to find a teammate when inside Newcastle's five metre line. Williams and Godman then exchanged penalties to leave the score at 13-9.

It looked as if that is the how the scores would stay going in to half-time, that was before Goneva produced a moment of individual brilliance.

He punted the ball forward on the touchline and chased the ball down to touch down in the corner to Leave Leicester 13-14 ahead at the interval.

Two more penalties from Williams stretched Tigers lead to 13-20 shortly after half-time.

Fantastic break

Newcastle were given encouragement when Youngs was shown a yellow card for a deliberate knock-on and from the resulting penalty Scott Lawson made a fantastic break to stretch over in the corner to reduce the Falcons' arrears to 18-20.

Despite being down to 14 men, Leicester should have scored just moments later. With three men over, Pablo Matera played a sloppy forward pass and the opportunity was gone.

Tigers were to make up for it two minutes later, though, as the impressive Goneva broke free after a strong driving maul to go over for his second try of the afternoon to make it 18-27.

Five minutes later, replacement Thomas Waldrom, ran through the gap in the Newcastle backline to give Leicester huge breathing space at 18-34. The returning Manu Tuilagi was then shown a yellow card for another deliberate knock-on.

Despite that, Leicester remained in control and Matera went over for his first try in a Tigers shirt to give them a bonus point victory.

Remarkably another yellow card was given to Toby Flood just before the end, for another deliberate knock-on.