Leicester Tigers guaranteed themselves a home semi-final in the Prem Rugby Cup by beating Harlequins to top Pool B.<\/p>\n
The 33-27 victory at Mattioli Woods Welford Road opened up a nine-point lead at the top of the table for Leicester, who have never won the competition, with one match left to play for second-placed Northampton Saints.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Exeter Chiefs moved top of Pool A with a convincing win over Bath to seal their own spot in the last four.<\/p>\n
Dan John scored twice for the Chiefs as the hosts secured a 31-19 bonus-point win to pull four points clear of second-placed Gloucester.<\/p>\n
Will Butt gave Bath the lead in the eighth minute but Exeter responded with three tries in 10 minutes to take a 19-7 lead in at the break, before seeing out the victory in the second half.<\/p>\n
They will secure a home tie if Gloucester fail to beat Bath in the final round of matches next weekend. <\/p>\n
Should the Cherry and Whites earn a bonus-point win at the Recreation Ground, the Chiefs will travel to face the Tigers.<\/p>\n
A 72nd-minute penalty try proved the key moment as Leicester saw off bottom side Harlequins.<\/p>\n
Tries from Josh Bellamy, Luke Northmore and Stu Townsend cancelled out scores from Jamie Blamire and Will Wand to give Quins a three-point lead at half-time.<\/p>\n
A second try each for Bellamy and Wand, after Ryan Crowley had put Leicester ahead, had the game evenly poised at 26-22 to the Tigers with 16 minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
Quins prop Sam Bland was sent to the sin-bin for an offence from the set-piece that led to the penalty try, with Northmore reducing the deficit with a try on 80 minutes to secure a losing bonus point for Quins, who remain rooted to the bottom of the pool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leicester Tigers guaranteed themselves a home semi-final in the Prem Rugby Cup by beating Harlequins to top Pool…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-438594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}