Pressure is on to keep Leeds alive and kicking

If you want expansive, multi-phase rugby, with slick execution and tries galore, go to Twickenham on Saturday, or Franklins Gardens, where Northampton play Gloucester.

If blood and thunder, desperation stakes is more your cup of tea, then Headingley Carnegie on Sunday at 5.30pm might very well suit your needs.

For two teams will do battle in West Yorkshire in a game that neither dare lose – for Leeds, defeat would leave them circling the drain.

Leeds are three points adrift of Newcastle at the foot of the Premiership with only Sale within striking distance of the pair.

It would take a monumental collapse for the Manchester club to be sucked in, leaving all but the very few eternal optimists inside Headingley and Newcastle’s Kingston Park to conclude that this and the return in April are relegation deciders.

Defeat on Sunday would leave Leeds at least six points behind the Falcons and mentally shattered.

So expect Sunday’s game to be fraught with tension and nerves.

Handling errors will be common-place among players frightened to make a mistake.

Tackles will be hard and ferocious, with no quarter given.

The shrill of the referee’s whistle will be a common sound.

And therein lies the key to Sunday’s game – penalties.

The team who concedes most will likely lose.

In the two matches between the teams last season only one try was scored – Alfie To’oala’s match-winner on December 27, 2009 – with the other 42 points coming from penalty goals.

So step forward the place-kickers, Jimmy Gopperth for Newcastle and for Leeds, well, it could be any one from three.

Recent signing Adrian Jarvis assumed the No 10 shirt and kicking responsibilities in the heavy defeat at Saracens, having made his debut from the bench seven days earlier to earn Leeds a losing bonus point by kicking three penalties against champions Leicester.

Ceiron Thomas was Leeds’s saviour last season with the boot, the Welshman earning them an opening-day draw against Newcastle with a late kick and going onto score 149 points as Leeds stayed up.

However, the 27-year-old has been in and out of the team this year with injuries and the return to fitness of Lachlan Mackay.

Thomas’s early exit against Leicester led to Jarvis’s vital intervention and the Welshman was a replacement on Sunday.

Thomas has kicked only 55 points this year, a combination of absence, inaccuracy and the club’s aim at the start of the season to go for the lineout more when opponents were induced into infringements, being mitigating factors.

Leigh Hinton has assumed kicking responsibilities in their absence but has not proven as reliable.

Contrastingly, New Zealander Gopperth is Newcastle’s ‘Mr Dependable’ when the stadium goes quiet and all eyes focus on the kicker.

Gopperth was the highest points scorer in the Premiership last season and has scored the fifth-highest amount of goals so far this term, with 44 to his name.

That amounts to 134 of Newcastle’s 207 points in the 2010-11 campaign coming from the boot of Gopperth. Harlequins’ Nick Evans has the Premiership’s most, with 175 points coming from 62 kicks.

Sunday’s game will boil down to point-building with the boot, for neither side has much confidence when it comes to scoring tries.

Leeds have managed only 13 this season, an average of one a game, while Newcastle are not much more efficient, having done so only three times more.

As soon as a penalty is forced, Sunday’s referee will be motioning to the sticks and the kicking tee will be thrown on from the sidelines.

When outside opposition territory, boot on ball will continue to be the predominant sound as both sides look to kick ahead to gain a territorial advantage and force the opposing team into a mistake – a tactic that so often amounts to the frittering of possession.

Minimising defensive errors and indiscipline in the scrum and at the breakdown on Sunday will be just as crucial as the accuracy of the goal kicker.

This is not to say that there will not be any offensive rugby of any quality.

Leeds and Newcastle remain Premiership teams for now, and are capable on their day of producing multi-phase rugby with slick handling and canny movement.

Neil Back’s side did so in the LV Cup at Northampton, when they became the first visiting team for many moons to score four tries at Franklins Gardens.

How they would welcome a four-try win on Sunday and the five points that would give them to leapfrog Newcastle.

However, with so much on the line, so many implications for the present and the future, Leeds Carnegie will take victory any which way they can.