Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Six-try Toulon ease to Challenge Cup final victory over Glasgow

By PA
(Photo by PA)

Three second-half tries from Glasgow Warriors were not enough to stop Toulon from making it fifth time lucky with a 43-19 victory in the EPCR Challenge Cup final at the Aviva Stadium. After four final defeats, the French side hit Glasgow for six with three tries in each half as they eased to victory to give retiring Italian number eight Sergio Parisse a title-winning send-off.

ADVERTISEMENT

Toulon were quickly into their stride and looked confident from the off as they chased their first Challenge Cup title at the venue where they won their first Heineken Champions Cup crown in 2013.

They lost Wales fly-half Dan Biggar with a head injury after only four minutes, then saw Australian centre Duncan Paia’Aua go off for another HIA in the 32nd minute.

Video Spacer

An update on the global club competition | The Breakdown

Video Spacer

An update on the global club competition | The Breakdown

They also lost influential scrum-half Baptiste Serin in the final move of the opening 40 minutes with a left knee injury that required a third change to their starting back division.

There was a fourth alteration at the start of the second half when Mathieu Bastareaud came on to replace wing Gabin Villiers, who also failed an HIA. By then, though, Serin has sparked his side into life with two tries as they sped into a 21-0 interval lead.

Related

Toulon quickly recovered from the loss of Biggar and two minutes later, with Ihaia West on to replace the Welshman, Serin produced a moment of magic to get the scoreboard moving. After taking the ball from a ruck on the Glasgow 22 he dabbed the ball through the defensive line, regathered and just managed to touch down despite the efforts of Ollie Smith to turn him on his back over the line.

The scrum-half added the extras and then picked out 39-year-old Italian legend Parisse for a try at the posts after more pressure from the Top 14 outfit after Glasgow had lost a line-out.

ADVERTISEMENT

Serin added the extras and then picked up the third try after 25 minutes. Glasgow lost another line out on their 10-metre line and Toulon skipper Charles Ollivon drove on.

Fijian centre Waisea Vuidravuwalu carried on strongly and when he was brought down on the line, Serin picked up and dotted down before adding a third conversion.

Glasgow started the second half encouragingly, but their inability to turn pressure into points cost them dearly. It was not until their 11th incursion into the Toulon 22 that they managed to break their duck and that came via a try from skipper Kyle Steyn in the 55th minute from a neat move down the blindside of a lineout.

Before then replacement scrum-half Benoit Paillaugue had added a penalty to extend the lead to 24 points. George Horne’s angled conversion of Steyn’s score gave Glasgow hope, but two more tries slammed the door shut as far as a comeback was concerned.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Fijian duo of Jiuta Wainiqolo and Vuidravuwalu scored them and Paillaugue converted the latter to make it 36-7 with 16 minutes to go.

Glasgow earned some respectability with later tries from Sebastian Cancelliere and Steyn, but it was never going to be enough. West scampered over for the final try with two minutes to go and Paillaugue kicked another conversion to complete the scoring.

Related

 

ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

0 Comments
Be the first to comment...

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

145 Go to comments
LONG READ
LONG READ Return of 30-something brigade provides welcome tonic for Wales Return of 30-something brigade provides welcome tonic for Wales
Search