Leicester Tigers vs Racing 92: Dan Carter closes on clean sweep as Racing reach European Champions Cup final

Racing 92 will be Saracens’ opponents in the European Champions Cup final in Lyon on 14 May, after the Parisian club held off an error-ridden Leicester Tigers in the semi-final in Nottingham.

All Black great Dan Carter kicked three penalty goals and converted France scrum-half Maxime Machenaud’s scrambling third-minute try as a cosmopolitan Racing team bankrolled by real-estate tycoon Jacky Lorenzetti snuffed out Leicester’s attempt to recreate their European title glory of 2001 and 2002.

Racing are on the rise again themselves, after the glamour team of the 1980s with a sparkling history fell into disarray and relegation.

But here at the City Ground – where European Cup-winning exploits are associated with Brian Clough, Trevor Francis and John Robertson in the round-ball game – Leicester were repeatedly forced by Racing’s blitz defence into fumbles that prevented them bringing their England centre Manu Tuilagi and dangerous outside backs into play as they would have wished.

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It showed why Racing have the meanest defence in this season’s competition, with just eight tries conceded, and it took until the 79th minute for Leicester, the competition’s top try scorers, to cross their line through Tongan wing Telusa Veainu.

Racing led 13-6 at half-time, with Leicester’s points coming from a penalty by Freddie Burns and another by his replacement Owen Williams, after Burns went off with a twisted ankle.

Williams and Carter added penalties to leave Racing 16-9 up after 50 minutes, and this was when a particularly painful spell of Leicester errors set in.

While Tuilagi’s personal statistics were showing an unusually ineffective 13 metres from seven carries, Tom Croft unaccountably dropped the ball, a slick break by Mathew Tait was ruined in a slack link with Ben Youngs, then after a scrum taken by Leicester against the head, Williams lost the ball forward in a tackle. And that scrum had come from Tuilagi knocking on when he looked like storming towards the posts from an attacking line-out.

Punctuating that woeful Tigers tally was a marginal error by Racing, when a short forward pass on the short side of a scrum between Machenaud and Chris Masoe was picked up by the television match official and chalked off a “try” by Johan Goosen.

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When the Leicester lock Graham Kitchener conceded a penalty for a neck-roll tackle on Eddy Ben Arous it allowed Racing to gain valuable territory in the 69th minute.

And most costly of all for Leicester, in the context and timing of the offence, was a tight but correct call by the referee Nigel Owens that Croft had stepped across Juan Imhoff as the Argentina wing attempted to challenge Veainu for an aerial ball.

It gave Racing’s long-range expert Goosen a kick from wide out on the left to stretch Racing’s lead to 10 points, with eight minutes remaining, and the six-times-capped South Africa centre – who had somewhat surprisingly returned from a head injury assessment – nailed it with aplomb.

The errors even extended to Owens, as the referee when Carter and New Zealand won last October’s World Cup final called a phantom knock-on against Imhoff. “Sincere apologies,” the referee said, but it had cost Racing a possible match-sealing try.

When at long last a handling sequence stuck for Leicester – producing Veainu’s try from a line-out, via good forward rucking and a long pass by Peter Betham to Adam Thompstone – it was embellished by a brilliant, snap conversion from Williams.

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But Carter coolly kicked the restart deep into the Leicester 22 and a few phases later Tuilagi dived off his feet at a ruck and conceded the penalty that ended the match.

“It’s huge for this team to be in the final,” said Carter. “This competition is one of the reasons I came to Racing, and winning it would be a dream come true. It’s been an amazing four and a half months for me at the club already, Saracens have probably been the form side of the European Cup from the first game and we’re looking forward to Lyon.”

Richard Cockerill, the Leicester director of rugby, said: “We looked a bit jittery early on, and Racing defended strongly. We don’t do sulking, we’ve lost and now we’ve got six days to prepare to play Worcester, when a win will put us in the Premiership semi-finals.”

Leicester Tigers: M Tait (capt); T Veainu, P Betham, M Tuilagi, V Goneva (A Thompstone 77); F Burns (O Williams 37), B Youngs; M Ayerza (L Mulipola 64), H Thacker (G Bateman 74), D Cole, D Barrow, G Kitchener, M Fitzgerald (T Croft 48), L McCaffrey, O Fonua (E Slater 53).

Scorers: try: Veainu; con: Williams; pens: Burns, Williams 2.

Racing 92: B Dulin; J Rokocoko, J Goosen (R Tales 62-65), A Dumoulin (L Dupichot 56), J Imhoff; D Carter, M Machenaud (capt, M Phillips 76); E ben Arous (K Vartanov 74), V Lacombe (C Chat 57), B Tameifuna (L Ducalcon 51), L Charteris, F van der Merwe (M Carizza 65), W Lauret, B le Roux, C Masoe.

Scorers: try: Machenaud; con: Carter; pens: Carter 3, Goosen.

Referee: N Owens (Wales).

Official attendance 22,148