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Leicester secured their eighth Guinness Premiership title when they used all their experience to overcome London Irish 10-9 in a tense final at Twickenham.

England's most successful club were appearing in the final for the fifth year in a row, having won only one of the last four, and struggled to impose themselves for long periods against a London Irish side seeking the title for the first time.

However, Jordan Crane scored the only try of the game just after an hour to edge them clear and Leicester, who finished the regular season top of the standings, held out.

They will now hope to complete a memorable double next Saturday when they take on Leinster in the Heineken Cup final at Murrayfield.

"We made it tough for ourselves and Irish played very well but the boys worked very hard," man of the match Geordan Murphy told Sky Sports.

"We felt we didn't play a lot in the first half so needed to put them under the cosh a bit more in the second but we are going to have to raise our game tenfold next week."

Leicester were caught cold at the start as they failed to deal properly with Mike Catt's kickoff, allowing full-back Peter Hewat all day to slot a drop goal, 21 seconds into the action.

However, the Exiles' kicking went downhill from there. They missed three first-half penalties - one by Hewat and two by Delon Armitage - as they failed to take advantage of a series of Leicester indiscretions.

Leicester produced a disjointed first half and though they had only shot at goal, they made it count when scrum-half Julien Dupuy slotted a penalty after 18 minutes.

Fears that the Irish scrum would be overwhelmed by Leicester's experienced pack proved unfounded too.

Such was their confidence, Leicester were forced into several professional fouls as they defended their own line at the end of the first half, finally culminating in a yellow card for number eight Crane.

Irish went ahead again during his absence with a Delon Armitage penalty nine minutes after the restart but Leicester gradually took command and notched the decisive try after good work by all three back-rowers.

Lewis Moody, on the pitch only for two minutes as a replacement, slipped a lovely inside pass to Craig Newby and Crane, who kicked the decisive penalty in the semi-final shootout victory over Cardiff, stretched his arm out just far enough to finish it off.

Dupuy converted to give Leicester some breathing space at 10-6.

Delon Armitage brought Irish back to within a point with a penalty from halfway seven minutes from the end but Leicester, packed with internationals, had enough experience to run the clock down and survive the exiles' last desperate thrusts.

"It made up for the sin-binning for the boys, I just managed to get it over the line," Crane said of his try.

"It's brilliant, we came through in the end. The way we have backed it up for the last few weeks has been awesome."

Reuters