Gloucester v Leicester: Five takeaways as Steve Borthwick would be ‘foolish to ignore’ Villa Park magic after Tigers dismantled Cherry and Whites
Leicester Tigers' Jack Van Poortvliet and an inset of Ollie Chessum with former Gloucester and Leicester lock Ed Slater on the pitch after The Slater Cup
Following Leicester Tigers’ 36-17 victory over Gloucester in the PREM Rugby clash at Villa Park, here are our five takeaways from The Ed Slater Cup.
Top line
On a sun-drenched afternoon in Birmingham, with 23,000 inside a Villa Park that looked magnificent in the spring light, Leicester Tigers delivered a performance of sharp, purposeful rugby to claim a bonus point victory and consolidate their position in the Premiership’s top three. Villa Park became the 42nd ground used in Premiership Rugby history, and it graced the occasion handsomely, befitting a Slater Cup match.
PREM Rugby’s Big Game Weekend initiative deserves genuine credit. Three marquee fixtures on one Saturday, staged in iconic venues beyond the usual rugby geography, is a bold and successful attempt to grow the game’s footprint. The Tigers’ try scorers tell the story of a devastating opening quarter: Will Wand, Gabe Hamer-Webb, Jamie Blamire (2); four tries built on dominant set-piece, precision handling and direct, abrasive midfield play. Orlando Bailey added a fifth before half-time and Harry Wells added a sixth late on in a bizarre moment on the Gloucester line that was the very definition of the term ‘coach killer’.
Gloucester’s afternoon was defined by a cruel paradox. From the 20-minute mark to the final whistle they were the better side, Matias Alemanno, Will Joseph and Dian Bleuler crossing as the Cherry and Whites played with the ambition and tempo that has flickered all season. They won 60 minutes of this match and lost it in 20. That is the most damning statistical verdict on a Gloucester season in which slow starts have consistently squandered the platform a talented squad deserves.
Wand was a deserving player of the match, outstanding in attack and resolute in defence throughout. He has been knocking on Steve Borthwick’s door all season and is close to breaking it down. With Tommy Freeman not yet fully convincing at outside centre for England, the argument for Wand grows louder with every performance of this quality.
Leicester’s Record-Breaking Blitz Sets the Tone
If Gloucester’s slow starts have been the story of their season, Leicester’s opening quarter here wrote a chapter of its own. The Tigers claimed their fastest try-scoring bonus point of the Premiership season, and did so in a manner that will linger long in the memory of everyone fortunate enough to be inside Villa Park.
Wand opened the scoring inside the first minute, barely time enough for the crowd to settle, with Ben Redshaw’s defensive positioning already found wanting as the Leicester centre punched through a channel that should have been closed. Hamer-Webb added a second on five minutes, and again Renshaw was the man caught short on the Gloucester left edge, the Tigers winger’s pace exposing a defender who never got close to making the tackle count. Two tries, five minutes, and the same Gloucester weakness identified and ruthlessly exploited twice in rapid succession.
Blamire then delivered a performance of genuine menace from hooker, crossing twice in four minutes to complete a bonus point secured in just 16 minutes. The first of those Blamire tries was a thing of real craft, Hamish Watson and Blamire combining beautifully at the front of the lineout, the Scotland flanker’s timing and instinct creating the space for his hooker to drive over from close range. It was exactly the kind of set-piece intelligence that has made Watson one of the signings of the Premiership season. He arrived at Welford Road with a considerable reputation and has exceeded it.
Bath had previously held the record for the fastest bonus point of the season, completing theirs in 19 minutes. Leicester surpassed it with three minutes to spare, a statement no team in England has matched this campaign.
Where the Game Was Won and Lost
The blueprint for how Leicester dismantled Gloucester was written in the most basic currency of rugby. Win collisions. Move the ball wide. Punish poor decision-making in defence. The Tigers executed all three with a fluency that left Gloucester chasing shadows before the occasion had found its rhythm.
The first try was a three-on-two that Gloucester’s defensive structure could not resolve. Billy Searle’s floated pass was beautiful, but the real damage was done by the pace of thinking; slick hands, width of passing and a Gloucester backfield that found Charlie Atkinson asked to cover ground no single player should be expected to cover alone. The second compounded the problem. Redshaw’s positioning on the outside was the critical failure; the one place a winger cannot surrender is the touchline channel, and Hamer-Webb took precisely what was offered.
What Leicester did for large portions of this match was not complicated. Their lineout was dominant, their aerial contest composed and their passing precise. Two or three passes from Jack van Poortvliet and Searle and the ball was with Steward in wide channels, the defence already scrambling. It is an age-old recipe: set-piece supremacy, territorial control, clean hands. Geoff Parling’s side executed it with the conviction of a team that knows exactly who they are.
Gloucester, by painful contrast, accumulated 17 unforced handling errors. The question that will occupy George Skivington and Chris Boyd is whether that reflects a game plan that overcomplicates matters beyond the squad’s current capacity to execute, or a group of players simply under-executing a reasonable one. The answer shapes everything about where Gloucester go from here.
The Ed Slater Cup and What It Means
When Ed Slater was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in July 2022, rugby union was already absorbing the devastating reality that MND had claimed Doddie Weir and Rob Burrow, and would eventually take Joost van der Westhuizen.
When Ed Slater was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in July 2022, rugby union was already absorbing the devastating reality that MND had claimed Doddie Weir, Rob Burrow, and Joost van der Westhuizen.
Slater, who played as a second row for both Leicester Tigers and Gloucester, responded to his diagnosis by founding the 4Ed Foundation, an organisation providing grants, practical equipment, home adaptations and community support for those living with MND and their families.
The Slater Cup emerged from that generosity of spirit. Contested at each Gallagher Premiership meeting between Leicester and Gloucester, it has grown in scale and ambition with every iteration, a fixture with genuine competitive weight that carries an additional and profound dimension of purpose.
The decision to stage this edition at Villa Park, with its 45,000 capacity dwarfing Kingsholm’s 16,000, reflects an ambition to turn the fixture into something genuinely significant. A pound from every ticket goes directly to 4Ed. Fifty per cent of the Race to the Slater Cup proceeds support Lewis Moody, who in October 2025 disclosed his own MND diagnosis, tightening further the bond between these two great clubs and a cause that rugby as a sport has embraced with rare, collective warmth.
Slater himself admitted he initially felt undeserving of the honour. He was wrong and today’s fantastic romp showed him precisely why he’s wrong- and he’ll be pleased he was.
England Watch: The Tigers Midfield Demands Attention
Steve Borthwick would be a foolish man to look away from Villa Park this afternoon. The Leicester midfield operating against Gloucester carries genuine England interest and the most compelling case belongs to the man wearing 13.
Will Wand is 24 years old, was playing Championship rugby for Coventry less than two years ago, and arrived at Welford Road as a lifelong Tigers fan who worked on a building site while playing for Cambridge in National League One. The journey is extraordinary. Standing at 6ft 1in and 97kg, Wand carries that rarest of combinations: genuine physical abrasion married to the footballing intelligence to pick lines that bigger, slower centres cannot find.
His first-minute try was a statement of intent, the centre hitting the line at pace and driving through contact with a power that Gloucester simply could not absorb. Then, on 39 minutes, he produced something entirely different, drawing the defence with a hard running line before releasing Bailey off his shoulder with the timing and vision of a player operating well above his experience level. Two contributions, two entirely different skill sets, one very large argument for England selection.
Bailey himself has been the ideal foil throughout, distributive, assured and forensic in his reading of the defensive line, while Billy Searle, left-footed and increasingly authoritative at fly-half, has been one of the quiet stories of the Premiership season, honing a craft that demands respect from any defensive system in the country.
The England angle sharpens when you consider Seb Atkinson, Wand’s opposing centre today. Two young, abrasive English centres, both built for the Test arena, both with the physicality Borthwick demands. The thought of Wand and Atkinson as a 12-13 axis at some future point is one worth filing. Today, they were opponents. Eventually, they might be the same answer.