Williams distraught as Leicester survive unique endgame

CARDIFF v LEICESTER: Cardiff 26 Leicester 26 Leicester win 7-6 on place kicksRUGBY UNION is no stranger to late drama but the sport found itself in alien, wild-west territory yesterday. Never before has a top-level game in Britain been settled by a penalty shoot-out and even Leicester, who will now meet Leinster in the Heineken Cup final in Edinburgh on May 23rd, felt slightly disoriented by the experience.

“It’s a horrible way to lose and not really a fantastic way to win,” muttered the Tigers’ captain, Geordan Murphy, who was among the first to console Martyn Williams after the Lions flanker’s missed kick had cost the Cardiff Blues a first appearance in a European final.

The only other major match to have been settled in such fashion was a French championship final between Beziers and Agen in 1984; this was a unique endgame in the professional era.

In an oval-ball sport largely populated by big men with average footballing skills a goalkeeper is not required to make life interesting but, ultimately, Leicester had reason to thank the soccer background of their number eight Jordan Crane. The England player used to be a goalkeeper for West Bromwich Albion’s under-14s and, cometh the hour, he buried his chance with the aplomb of a latter-day Jeff Astle.

Had he fired wide, as John Murphy had done already, the “what happened next” possibilities would have been endless. According to Murphy, a surprising number of his team-mates were backing away and undoing their bootlaces when the moment came to identify the next five kickers after the first round of five kicks had been completed.

Toby Flood’s injured ankle, which may keep him out of the final, had merely exacerbated the problem. “Some of the guys were more nervous than I’ve seen them in a long time,” said Murphy, who is now awaiting a dream final against his native province. “It would have been even scarier had Dan Hipkiss and Harry Ellis stepped up.”

There was also the small matter of Julien Dupuy’s reappearance as a late blood replacement in circumstances not a million miles removed from a controversial quarter-final incident involving Harlequins which remains the subject of an inquiry by tournament organisers. The man to come off was Hipkiss, who had required patching up earlier in the game but returned to the fray in a headguard. Suddenly he was bare-headed again and gesturing to the old wound in his scalp, giving the fourth referee, Alan Lewis, no choice but to approve the substitution. Back came Dupuy to slot his penalty amid loud booing from Blues fans.

“Rules are rules and I was certainly within them,” shrugged an unrepentant Richard Cockerill, Leicester’s coach.

To be fair to the Tigers, they really should have had victory wrapped up long before the lottery commenced. With seven minutes left they led 26-12 and seemed assured of a place in a fifth Heineken Cup final. Two yellow cards, however, had reduced them to 13 men for six minutes and it was the Blues who suddenly looked fresher as cries of “Swing Low” died in English throats.

Jamie Roberts, the Blues’ hitherto quiet Lions centre, surged over and Ben Blair landed a magnificent touchline conversion to reduce the gap to seven. A minute later Roberts launched another attack from the Blues’ 22 and the winger Tom James slalomed his way over for a wonderful try in the same left corner. Blair again made the angled conversion look simple. However, extra-time of 10 minutes each way simply revealed that both sides had run themselves into the ground.

It was impossible to blame either set of players for that, after a relentlessly physical encounter. Leicester had even looked supremely up for it before kick-off, mauling the ball back from the warm-up area to the tunnel having already given the tackle pads a thumping. The adversarial mood endured throughout the first quarter, with the home captain, Paul Tito, groggily retiring inside the first 10 minutes and the Blues conceding a stream of penalties.

The only problem for Leicester was that Dupuy could not hit a converted Welsh barn, never mind the door, and missed three penalty attempts.

Fail to take your chances at this level and the cost is normally prohibitive. Worse was to follow, though, when Leicester, unforgivably, crept in front of Flood at the restart after conceding a penalty and watched Leigh Halfpenny drill over another three points to give the Blues a 12-10 lead. It would have been unforgivable had the hard work of Tom Croft, Craig Newby and Marcos Ayerza gone unrewarded, as Tito’s absence badly affected the Blues’ lineout.

When it came to the crunch, however, it was not the sharp Leicester tries by Scott Hamilton or Geordan Murphy which stuck in the memory but the sad, slumped shoulders of Williams, the magnificent seven who was never designed to be this type of gunslinger.

Hopefully he will have bounced back by the time the Lions leave for South Africa but, as with Munster the previous day, the number of tourists here proved inversely proportional to the outcome. Leicester have only six days to recover before a Guinness Premiership semi-final against Bath but their bumps and bruises will ease faster than the hollow feeling in the Blues’ hearts.

GuardianService

CARDIFF BLUES: B Blair; L Halfpenny, T Shanklin, J Roberts (C Sweeney, 98), T James; N Robinson, R Rees; G Jenkins, G Williams, Filise (J Yapp, 80), Davies, P Tito (D Jones, 10), M Molitika (A Powell, 60), M Williams, X Rush.

LEICESTER: G Murphy (capt); S Hamilton, D Hipkiss (Dupuy, 96), S Vesty, J Murphy (O Smith, 64); T Flood (A Mauger, 61), J Dupuy (H Ellis, 75); M Ayerza (M Castrogiovanni, 90), G Chuter (B Kayser, 60), M Castrogiovanni (J White, 51), T Croft, B Kay (Wentzel, 93), C Newby, B Woods (L Moody, 73), J Crane.

Sin-binNewby, 63; G Murphy, 68.

Referee: A Rolland (Ireland).