Rugby Union: Back leaves Tigers firmly on the title track

IT WILL not live long in the memory; indeed, precisely 79 minutes and 53 seconds of nothing much had been consigned to the dustbin of Premiership history by the time Neil Back - yes, him again - scuttled away from one of Leicester's trademark driving mauls and covered the last 20 metres to the Wasps line without so much as a fingernail being laid upon him. The England flanker's strike rate has been quite something this season - on average, a score every match and a half - but the close-range nature of his previous 14 tries made this one a real Appalachian Trail job. Sadly for the 12,000-plus crowd, the whole match seemed like a long-distance grind.

Still, it told us pretty much everything we needed to know about the destination of this season's domestic honours. The Tigers should wrap up the Allied Dunbar title before the end of April; a run of 10 successive Premiership wins, all of them completed in the absence of supposedly indispensable personnel, leaves very little room for argument. As for the Tetley's Bitter Cup, look no further than Wasps. They are so comfortably the quickest side left in the competition that Gloucester, Richmond or Newcastle will have to superglue the Londoners to their communal starting block to deny them the silverware.

"I think they'll win it," agreed Dean Richards, the Leicester team manager and curmudgeon-in-chief, after an anti-climactic game in which the error count mimicked the temperature in reaching the mid-50s. "Wasps are a very competent side: they defend outstandingly well and they mix it up front, too. They are the only side to have given us real problems at Welford Road this season." Indeed, Richards rarely has to wait until seven seconds from time for confirmation of a home victory.

Had Wasps worked out a method of getting some runnable ball to Paul Sampson, their Linford Christie of a right-wing, those last few seconds might well have been irrelevant. "You don't play candy floss rugby at Leicester," explained Nigel Melville, the Londoners' coach. "Come to Welford Road for a nice afternoon out and you'll get absolutely caned. Yes, Paul had the legs on the opposition - let's face it, he's bloody quick - but there was no point giving him the ball in our own 22." Oh really? When you have a sprinter like Sampson in your ranks, you can give him the ball any damned place you like.

In terms of this autumn's World Cup, time is very much against Sampson, just as it is against Will Green, Simon Shaw and Alex King, three other Wasps who have slipped off the England pace during the last year or so. But Clive Woodward could usefully run his selector's rule over Green and Shaw, in particular. Both men scrummaged their weight and contributed handsomely to a mighty tight-five tackle count - during Saturday's first half, the visitors gave every bit as good as they got from Martin Johnson and company - and Shaw, especially, showed the threequarter handling skills that made him the talk of the town during his apprenticeship at Bristol.

Illuminatingly, it was only when Shaw departed the scene 18 minutes from time that the Leicester forwards, of whom the astonishingly resilient Darren Garforth was by some distance the pick, located the Londoners' short and curlies and twisted hard. Until then, they had been forced to rely on some cultured kicking from Geordan Murphy - "he'll make the Ireland Test team at some stage, either at outside-half or full-back," predicted Richards - and a typically combative performance from Pat Howard in midfield. The former Wallaby does not so much flirt with the off-side line as sleep with it, but if you can get away with liberties, why play by the rules?

"We're another step closer," acknowledged Richards, his cautious streak narrowing marginally in the face of the inevitable. "There's still a way to go, though," added Johnson, somehow managing to make his ultra-cagey employer sound like a cross between Austin Healey and Naseem Hamed.

This Premiership means so much to Leicester that their most experienced player still dares not think about it.

Leicester: Try Back; Conversion Stimpson; Penalties Stimpson 3. Wasps: Penalty Logan; Drop goal King.

Leicester: T Stimpson; L Lloyd (N Ezulike, 67), C Joiner, P Howard, D Lougheed; G Murphy, J Hamilton; G Rowntree (D Jelley, 62), R Cockerill (D West, 62), D Garforth, M Johnson (capt), F van Heerden, L Moody, M Corry, N Back.

Wasps: G Rees; P Sampson, F Waters, M Denney, K Logan; A King, M Wood; D Molloy, T Leota, W Green, M Weedon (capt), S Shaw (A Reed, 62), L Dallaglio, P Scrivener, J Worsley.

Referee: E Morrison (Bristol).