Tries from Ben Youngs and Niall Morris secured two points from a 15-15 draw with the Ospreys in Swansea in Round 5 and now the top spot in Pool 2 – and qualification for the quarter-finals – rests on Round 6 this weekend.
“Toulouse are 19 times French champions, four times European champions, and we have a huge amount of respect for them,” said Tigers director of rugby Richard Cockerill after an enthralling match in Swansea.
“You’ve got the historically biggest club in Europe coming to Welford Road with a place in the quarter-finals at stake and that is an occasion our players wanted to create for themselves, so credit to them for getting us there.
“We are where we wanted to be – going into Round 6 with the chance of qualifying. It’s going to be a massive match and a massive occasion.”
Tigers trailed 10-0 at the Ospreys before clawing themselves back into the game with two tries in five second-half minutes and led 15-10 in the late stages of the game. But then the home side scored in the right-hand corner and Dan Biggar’s conversion drifted just wide with the scores level.
“We had to hang on for large parts of the game, but we stayed in it,” said Cockerill.
“Ospreys played very, very well, and there were no issues if they had won. Give them credit for that, and we rode our luck a bit with their missed kicks at goal.
“We weren’t brilliant but the grit and determination were good and we just kept playing because we felt our chances would come.
“We were 10-3 down at half-time and if we conceded the next score we might not have got it back. But you saw the ‘up’ in energy when we scored, and then we scored again quite quickly.
“It was a very tight arm-wrestle the whole time. There were always going to be tiny margins in these games. We had a crack at each other and a draw was probably about right.
“Now there is everything to play for, a massive game at Welford Road – just the kind of games you want to be involved in.”
