WE’LL SPARE YOU the game of two halves guff.
This was an encounter worthy of being a European Cup final in any era.
An absorbing contest from beginning to end. The only thing that set the second half apart was the presence of three tries. The result of an enthralling, energy-sapping opening 40 minutes that would have ended most teams.
To get a sense of the momentous effort delivered by Toulon on their way to this first Heineken Cup success, you need not look further than their tackle count. A whopping 176 collisions all-told. Fully 110 more than were required from Clermont whose 68% possession counted for nothing in the end.
Half time brought and unbearably tight 3-3 score line, but once Clermont made the breakthrough thanks to a wondrous piece of skill from Aurelien Rougerie that set Napolioni Nalaga racing for the corner it looked as though they had arrived.
Out of reach
When Rougerie provided another assist, this time for Brock James, minutes later a game with scores very hard to come by looked out of reach for Toulon at 15-6. Instead, the numbers are echoing around inside the heads of every Clermont player as they head home in solemn mood.
“We had an opportunity to kill the game and we did not.” Said Julien Bonnaire. “We made silly mistakes and we cannot afford that. It’s disappointing, because we have expended a lot of energy without gaining a lot from it.”
This was a game of huge men and small margins. Rougerie lamented that ‘five or 10 minutes can lose a final’, but two moments in particular stand out.
Delon Armitage’s 63rd minute try shook Clermont to their core. Brock James elected not to kick and Wesley Fofana elected not to pass.
“Unfortunately at one of our initiatives we turned the ball over. We had other options but the players play it as they see it.” Was Vern Cotter’s view of the match-changing moment.
Waves of pressure
Joe Van Niekerk crashed in to the ruck after Fofana had been taken down and Juan Martin Fernandez-Lobbe managed to boss yet another ruck and come out with the ball for Armitage.
15-6 was no more. It was 15-16 and that is the sequence of numbers Bernard Laporte and his team can enjoy reciting.
Even as the tackle count grew and grew, even when Clermont continued to come back in waves with Sitiveni Sivivatu finding gaps that should not have existed, onlookers were inclined to back the resolve of Toulon.
Rougerie had been replaced, not injured, but not fit enough for 80 minutes like this on his first outing after injury. Morgan Parra limped off. James was replaced by David Skrela – perhaps because he was a better bet to land that late drop goal.
In the end, it did fall to Skrela and he did fail.
“First of all I tried not to be offside,” says the mountainous man-of-the match, Mathieu Bastareaud. “I had Jonny (Wilkinson) just beside me and I was on the trajectory of the ball and I was lucky.”
Fortune always has a massive part to play. However, when a man who has endured such a troubled career to date to arrive at a Heineken Cup final and put in 17 tackles (the most of any player), make 47 metres off six carries and also make a crucial first-half turnover when Davit Zirakashvili broke towards the try-line; he more than deserves his ‘luck’.
With Jonny Wilkinson drawing attention away, the man of the match sat in ripped red shorts with time to look down and ponder the new chunk of gold that hung from his tree-trunk neck.
It was no game of two halves, this was a Trojan effort from start to finish.
