THE STAT PACK

Cyle Brink emerged as scorer from a forward drive

The Tigers’ last home game in Europe - against Brive before Christmas - provided a curiosity for the historians and statisticians.

You may recall that Tigers won the game, with a bonuspoint score from Nemani Nadolo just before the final whistle wrapping up an entertaining 39-17 victory against French rivals making a first-ever trip to Leicester.

The game was poised at 14-6 at half-time, with Tom Youngs providing the Tigers try and fly-halves Joaquin Diaz Bonilla and Enzo Herve trading early penalties.

But Tigers pulled away in the second half with replacement George Ford taking over the kicking, replacement scrum-half Ben Youngs finishing a sparkling attack to score in the right-hand corner and replacement backrower Cyle Brink scoring for the first time for the club before the late Nadolo touchdown.

Tigers statistician Stuart Farmer consulted the record books to confirm that the 20-point haul from the bench had been equalled once and beaten just once in the club’s history.

The previous 20-pointer was also in Europe, back in September 1997.

On that occasion, in only the club’s second season of Heineken Cup rugby, the 47-22 victory over Leinster in the pool stages included tries from Will Greenwood and Graham Rowntree in the last 10 minutes of the game after starting on the bench, and fellow replacement Waisale Serevi kicking two conversions and two penalties.

But the biggest-ever contribution from the bench was in a Cup game against Otley in November 2000.

A fourth-round fixture, which Tigers won 83-11 against lower-league opponents, featured tries from Will Johnson and JP O’Reilly after starting among the replacements and a second-half hat-trick from Perry Freshwater who was back-up to starting front-rowers Derek Jelley and Ricky Nebbutt.

Stat Pack

SOME OF THE FACTS AND FIGURES BEHIND THE HEADLINES...