‘Tigers win a fitting tribute to Mauger’

Leicester Tigers sent off Aaron Mauger in fine style with a thrilling win at Northampton and Geordan Murphy believes it was a fitting tribute to the departing head coach.

Mauger was told this week that he had been replaced as the top man at Tigers by Matt O’Connor but stayed on to mastermind their thrilling 36-31 win at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday.

The Tigers shipped three tries in the first half to Saints as Nafi Tuitavake, Ahsee Tuala and Louis Picamoles all went over.

But they rolled up their sleeves and turned the tide in the second half, Ben Youngs and Lachlan McCaffrey adding to a first-half try from Adam Thompstone.

And in the end it was Owen Williams who held his nerve with two late penalties to seal victory and give Mauger the perfect send off.

The Kiwi – a former Tiger in his playing career – is well liked at Welford Road, the outpouring on social media from his own players during the week proved that.

And Tigers assistant coach Murphy was delighted the players did their jobs and kept their hopes of a 13th consecutive top-four finish in the league alive.

“It’s obviously an emotional day for Mauge (Aaron Mauger) and I thought he handled it really well,” he told the Premiership’s official website.

“We came together as a side on Monday and talked about it. He said the board had made the decision and it was going to go a different way.

“He didn’t want the decision to affect the performance in the week and he did a great job in setting the team up to come to Franklin’s Gardens.

“It’s tough to come here and get a win because I don’t remember when the east midlands derby hasn’t been a one-score game.

“They are generally pretty tight games and the boys wanted to give Mauge a good send-off today. I think they did that.

“The players really like him, he’s a great coach and a few of them have said it’s disappointing that he’s going.

“We’ve got another great coach coming in and it’s probably easy for the players because they just go to work and keep getting results like that.”

Meanwhile, Saints’ top four hopes are almost at an end after this defeat, much to Jim Mallinder’s disappointment.

He said: “It could have gone either way.

“We made a very promising start, there were a few key moments in that game where as we watch it back we’ll think ‘what if?’.

“Particularly at the end of the first half, we had a very good overlap and should have scored that.

“There were a few other interesting incidents, but it was a close game, either side could have won it and unfortunately we didn’t win it today.

“I don’t think we had it all our own way in the first half. The referee thought our scrum was a bit of a problem so we got penalised on a few occasions there, which made it difficult.

“But generally we attacked well, with really good focus and intensity, and we scored some good tries.

“We will need to have a good look at the scrum and when the penalties are against you like that, you’re always up against them.”