It was not exactly a routine victory, but there was something awfully familiar about all this. Leicester put out just about their entire World Cup stable of players - from Martin Corry to Seru Rabeni - and proved too powerful in all the painful areas that count.
The Cardiff Blues put out all their best players and found themselves in an equally familiar position. They had started the season with a flash and a dash, but now found themselves in a game of high intensity. Here, the Blues always get mashed.
It was not quite as bad as yet another flop at the top for the Welsh region. For starters, Leicester are not exactly mugs on their own patch. It took them time to reconnect, but by the end they were in formidable form. Ben Kay ran the line-out. The front-five progressively took over the scrum. Corry was outstanding everywhere.
But as long as Nicky Robinson was on the field, the Blues looked as if, for once, they might rise to the occasion. As if the moment might have come. That the frustrations might be soothed.
The outside-half kicked well and distributed with precision. Gareth Thomas and Tom Shanklin outside him seemed in tune and, inside, Martyn Williams was in a different class as a creative support runner. Corry and Williams could not be further apart as back rowers, but I bet they would enjoy playing on the same side. Fat chance here.
Unfortunately for the visitors and for Williams in particular, Robinson lasted only just beyond the half-hour. His replacement, Dai Flanagan, is a neat and tidy footballer, but this stage required something a little more authoritative for the surprise to be sprung.
If the departure of Robinson was a turning point, another soon followed. Off went hooker Gareth Williams, not with a limp but wagged off by a yellow card for delving by hand into a ruck.
While the feisty hooker was off, Leicester struck. They already led by three penalties to two when Geordan Murphy - in excellent nick after the woes of Ireland's World Cup - performed a little cameo on the touchline, using all two centimetres available to him to launch a counter-attack.
It ended with Tom Varndell diving on a stabbed kick by Andy Goode on the other side of the field. Goode, sporting the strangest jigsaw of a beard - the Tigers are going unshaven to raise money for charity - banged over the conversion from wide out.
The trick was repeated very soon afterwards. This time it was Johne Murphy who successfully chased the Goode grubber. A duplicate try, the only difference with the goal being that the outside-half could only hit the post with his conversion.
The Blues dragged themselves back into the game. It helped having 15 on the pitch. From a line-out, John Yapp, a real force in the loose, if not the best scrummager in the world, had a charge at the line from an old-fashioned line-out peel.
He was stopped just short, but his captain, the estimable Xavier Rush, followed up to squirm over. The New Zealander has given the Blues a lot more hard-headedness, but still they cannot win these big games.
It is a front-five thing. Julian White will never be glamorous, but he causes uncomfortable things to happen. Leicester dish out pain in considerable portions and it is not just through the explosive Alesana Tuilagi and Rabeni banging about in full view. It is also about White making people groan at the scrum.
The Blues recovery was short-lived. The pain told. Paul Burke, who had provoked a groan or two at first with his initial touches, delivered the sweetest of short passes to Dan Hipkiss who scorched through, straight from a set-piece. It was a try that told of a battered defence fore and aft.
Then Shanklin - even the fittest and most reliable can make mistakes through tiredness - dropped a pass. Rabeni, not exactly best known for the delicacy of his kicking game, dinked a chip behind the defence, and Murphy J was away for his second try.
The final proof of the power of pain came at a scrum that was going only one way from the moment it was set close to the Blues' line. It was an act of mercy to award the penalty try.
Ben Blair, always a surging threat when counter-attacking, scored a late try for the visitors, but it served only to reinforce the lesson of the day: scraps at this level are not enough.
So the trend of many a year looks to be fashionable again. Leicester are going nowhere but into contention on all fronts. New coach Marcelo Loffreda, he of the Pumas of Argentina at the recent World Cup, will arrive this week to find a noble vessel in fine working order.
Cardiff are doing what they tend to do season in, season out. They can play divine rugby, but not when it matters. And that, unfortunately, means that they are a long way from being in contention anywhere but in the rather too comfortable confines of the Magners League.
As the World Cup showed, and as rugby history repeatedly reveals, the game where it really counts is rarely pretty. Plain old Leicester are going places.
Welford Road 17,118
LEICESTER G Murphy; Varndell, Hipkiss, Rabeni, Tuilagi (J Murphy ht); Goode (Burke 58), F Murphy (Laussucq 75); Ayerza, Kayser (M Davies 71), White (Castrogiovanni 54), L Deacon, Kay (Hamilton 75), Corry (capt), Moody (Abraham 70), Crane
Tries Varndell, J Murphy 2, Hipkiss, penalty Cons Goode, Burke 3 Pens Goode 3
CARDIFF BLUES Blair; J Roberts, Shanklin, G Thomas (R Thomas 70), James (R Williams 68); N Robinson (Flanagan 32), Rees (Spice 54); Yapp, G Williams, Filise (G Powell 70), B Davies, Tito (Morgan 64), Molitika (Sidoli 64), M. Williams, Rush (capt). Try Rush, Blair Cons Blair 2 Pens Blair 2
Referee N Owen (Wales)
