Red card for Hamilton adds to Tigers' woes

Leicester continued their dreadful season yesterday, crashing to a 39-13 defeat against Leeds Tykes at Headingley. The Tigers were hampered by the sending-off of their 20-year-old lock James Hamilton, who was shown a red card midway through the first half by the referee, Dave Pearson, for some skulduggery at a ruck.

It left 14-man Leicester with a near impossible task trying to contain the well-drilled Yorkshire team who ran in a total of four tries for a bonus point. Former Scotland fly-half Duncan Hodge finished with 24 points from a try, five penalties and two conversions.

At Wycombe, Wasps had Mark van Gisbergen to thank for 17 of their points in the 22-15 win over London Irish. But the boot of Mark Mapletoft ensured that the Exiles stayed close enough to their opponents to pick up a bonus point.

There were long faces at The Stoop Memorial Ground the day before where Harlequins not only lost to Gloucester, but failed to score a point. The 16-0 victory ended Gloucester's poor away run - they had not won outside Kingsholm since last March - and secured second place in the table for them.

Northampton proved too strong for Newcastle. The 33-20 defeat was Newcastle's fourth loss of the season.

In Wales, Dai Young, the Cardiff coach, was stunned to see his side on the wrong end of a 15-point loss after dominating for long periods at Stradey Park on Saturday. "We were the far-better team," Young insisted, even though victory had gone to Llanelli, avoiding a third straight Celtic League defeat.

"We were better in every department except the one that mattered - the scoreboard," said Young, who was not impressed by the performance of the referee, Tony Redmond, as his side earned two more yellow cards to add to their collection.

"I'm not saying ours were not yellows, but some players get away with three finger-wagging warnings and our players get straight yellows." One Cardiff player to earn a sin-bin stint was Craig Quinnell, playing his first game since a six-week suspension for stamping.