Toulouse prove too tight

European Cup final: The Heineken European Cup is back in French hands and, what's more, given those hands belong to the French standard-bearers and inaugural winners of the competition, somehow all seems right in the European game again.

True, Irish rugby could have done with another success to back up Ulster's achievement four years ago, and, with both the timing and sense of opportunity, this season had never seemed more promising. That desire aside, the European Cup possibly needed another overdue French win. It had been six long years and counting since Brive had backed up Toulouse's initial 1996 win.

That it should be Toulouse was entirely fitting. They have won more matches than any club in the competition's history, which underlines that they are the least insular of the French clubs for whom the majority would still give far more importance to their domestic championship. The achievement is all the more meritorious in that they have to qualify for the cup every year.

Comparisons with Real Madrid are, in fact, a little spurious. More valid would be resemblances to Manchester United or one of the Italian giants, Juventuns and AC Milan. Guy Noves has been coach at Toulouse for a decade now, and this victory is Toulouse's 11th in 11 finals with the former French winger as coach, and he controls his club like a dictator, albeit a benign one who clearly enjoys great warmth and bonhommie amongst his players.

Noves is so steeped in Toulouse's history and culture, and such is his perceived need for day-to-day involvement, that, curiously, his name is rarely mentioned with regard to the French job.

Furthermore, rather than pursue a blatant chequebook policy, they encourage loyalty - as typified by career-long servant Emile Ntamack - and recruit selectively - as epitomised by Trevor Brennan.

They are the best supported club in France, and tens of thousands welcomed the squad home on Saturday night and again at a civic reception yesterday. Stade Toulousain are "the flag of the town", as the esteemed L'Equippe rugby writer Henri Bru puts it.

At Lansdowne Road on Saturday, a minimum charge of €40 from 2.30 on, on the premise that no more terrace tickets were available, seemed another example of ERC greed, and for those who also attended the exorbitantly priced semi-final it left a bad taste in the mouth.

On the field, with the wind affecting passing as well as kicking, as an insight into French club rugby this unique affair wasn't vintage. But it was interesting, and talking to those who boosted the attendance to a credible 28,600 they enjoyed the sense of occasion which the organisers generated as well as the colour and atmosphere created by the noisy bands of travelling supporters.

Toulouse always seemed to have another gear and looked like they could do more with the ball. Fittingly, the game's decisive score underlined their greater cutting edge when Yannick Jauzion handed off Manny Edmonds and put the game's most dangerous runner, Vincent Clerc, over in the corner.

Perpignan didn't play enough to their pack in the first-half, in which the locks Jerome Thion and Rimas Alvarez Kairelis again excelled. Ironically, when they did attempt to, with hooker Michel Konieck having a difficult day in the wind, they were let down by their lineout when they opted for close-range throw-ins off penalties, which Toulouse stole.

Their backs looked comparatively guileless, and resorted to chips which Toulouse's outside backs read well.

Perpignan had the more muscular scrum and maul, though each pack had spells of supremacy, and when Marc Dal Maso was introduced in the final quarter Perpignan's aggressiveness went up another notch.

Toulouse's response to Perpignan coming within a score of them was an object lesson in how to close a game out, before Yann Delaigue steered the insurance penalty into the wind.

Christian Labit was deemed man of the match, though he had nothing like the impact of his tour de force in the semi-final over Munster, and for once this was one of the occasions when the award could rightly have been given to Delaigue, not only for a high-class return of six from seven mostly tricky kicks, but also for a tactical kicking game which was vastly superior to his counterpart, Edmonds's.

A late curve ball for Jean Marc Souverbie's consolation try couldn't mask a poor kicking game by the Australian, whose chips and kicks out on the full led to four first-half turnovers, while a second-half drop-goal attempt from an ideal position with enough time for the proverbial Hamlet cigar was horribly sliced.

In mitigation of Perpignan's chief playmaker, a Toulouse defence which, in the semi-final and final, yielded one one immaterial try, in the last play of the decider, was the bedrock for their success. No one typified this more than Jauzion or Trevor Brennan. Cleverly allowed to lead his team out in glorious isolation, a fired up and aggressive but controlled Brennan could frequently be seen to pick himself up from the ground after one all-or-nothing hit to unselfishly regroup and make another - often three or four in the same passage of play.

Toulouse had done their homework, and Brennan was one of those sacrificed to shore up the inside channels at which Perpignan like to launch their forward target runners.

Yet, a couple of ritual stuffings of weak opposition in the pool stages aside, the nagging suspicion remained that the best club side in Europe hadn't really played to their potential all that often, and certainly did not scale the heights of their destruction of Leinster last season.

Maybe they're not quite the team of three years ago which Munster so brilliantly defeated in that baking Bordeaux semi-final. But they've fouled up so many Euro campaigns along the way and were cruelly unlucky in a few more - none more so than last year when the gas explosion which damaged their ground and forced them to play their first three matches away was put in perspective by the deaths of 30 people.

Vintage Toulouse or not, they deserved this. The original order has been restored.

SCORING SEQUENCE: 3 min: Delaigue pen 3-0; 16: Delaigue pen 6-0; 28: Delaigue pen 9-0; 32: Clerc try, Delaige con 16-0; 40: Deliague pen 19-0; (half-time 19-0); 45: Edmonds pen 19-3; 52: Edmonds pen 19-6; 58: Edmonds pen 19-9; 72: Edmonds pen 19-12; 82: Delaigue pen 22-12; 84: Souverbie try 22-17.

TOULOUSE: C Poitrenaud; E Ntamack, X Garbajosa, Y Jauzion, V Clerc; Y Delaigue, F Michalak; B Lecouls, Y Bru, J-B Poux, D Gerard, F Pelous (capt), T Brennan, C Labit, J Bouilhou. Replacements: W Servat for Bru (15 min), F Makau for Brennan (67 min), C Soulette for Lecouls (71 min).

PERPIGNAN: J-M Souverbie; P Bomati, P Giordani, C Manas, F Cermeno; M Edmonds, L Loustau; R Peillard, M Konieck, N Mas, J Thion, R Alvarez-Kairelis, G Le Corvec, P Murphy, B Goutta (capt). Replacements: M Dal Maso for Konieck (59 min), S de Besombes for Mas (61 min), L Mallier for Murphy (66 min).

Referee: C White (Eng).

Replaced by T Spreadbury (Eng) (16 min).