Blues battle past Castres Olympique

Last season’s Amlin Challenge Cup winners bounced back from three successive defeats in Pool 1 to record their second win of the group stages.

Leigh Halfpenny scored the solitary try against a side who had won the revesre fixture 27-20 back in October.

The Welsh wing crossed 15 minutes before the interval, while Dan Parks kicked nine points for the Blues, although he mirrored Castres kicker Seremaia Bai in suffering a mixed night from the tee.

Bai opened the scoring for the visitors with five minutes on the clock but not before he had missed a straightforward effort two minutes earlier.

Parks could have leveled the scores almost immediately afterwards but he uncharacteristically sent his 30-metre effort wide of the right-hand post. The Scotland star made amends with his first successful strike with 11 minutes played, before handing the Blues the lead four minutes later with one of the simplest penalties he willl attempt all year.

Bai should have brought the sides all square once more on 22 minutes but the Fijian was again wayward from close-range.

With both sides struggling to truly impose themselves, Heineken Man of the Match Halfpenny’s second try in as many games since returning from a lengthy injury lay-off lit up the half.

The Wales and Lions wing showed his class to control Casey Laulala’s well-weighted grubber with his right boot before out sprinting the defensive cover having picked a diagonal line from right to left.

Parks followed Bai in missing the kind of kick he would expect to land from 12 metres to the left of the posts but the Blues were 11-3 to the good with 25 minutes gone.

It remained that way until the half-time break, although both sides unsuccessfully attempted long-range penalties – Parks for the Blues on the half-hour mark and opposite number Cameron McIntyre for Castres with the last play of the first 40 minutes.

The second period was a similarly tight affair, with neither side able to cross the tryline. A penalty apiece was all the sides had to show for their second-half efforts until replacement fly-half Pierre Bernard stepped up to secure what could yet be an important losing bonus-point for Castres with just four minutes remaining.

Castres trailed 14-6 at that point and looked set to leave for home with nothing but Bernard’s 40-metre penalty ensures they remain in second place in the Pool with one game remaining.

While Castres will have mixed feelings surrounding the losing bonus-point, the result itself has come too late to gain the Blues passage into the quarter-finals of the Heineken Cup but it could be significant in terms of their overall ERC ranking.

The Blues are currently seeded sixth in European competition and will desperately want to avoid slipping too far down the list ahead of next season’s draw. A second place finish in the Pool would bring a valuable three ranking points, while a fourth-place finish would be met with just one.

The Blues are now a single point behind Castres leading into the final round of group matches, with the French side hosting Pool leaders Northampton and Dai Young’s men traveling to Murrayfield to face Edinburgh.