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

Three second-half tries from Glasgow Warriors weren’t sufficient to cease Toulon from making it fifth time fortunate with a 43-19 victory within the EPCR Challenge Cup final on the Aviva Stadium. After 4 final defeats, the French facet hit Glasgow for six with three tries in every half as they eased to victory to give retiring Italian quantity eight Sergio Parisse a title-winning send-off.

Toulon have been shortly into their stride and appeared assured from the off as they chased their first Challenge Cup title on the venue the place they gained their first Heineken Champions Cup crown in 2013.

They misplaced Wales fly-half Dan Biggar with a head damage after solely 4 minutes, then noticed Australian centre Duncan Paia’Aua go off for an additional HIA within the thirty second minute.

In addition they misplaced influential scrum-half Baptiste Serin within the final transfer of the opening 40 minutes with a left knee damage that required a 3rd change to their beginning again division.

There was a fourth alteration initially of the second half when Mathieu Bastareaud got here on to change wing Gabin Villiers, who additionally failed an HIA. By then, although, Serin has sparked his facet into life with two tries as they sped right into a 21-0 interval lead.

Toulon shortly recovered from the lack of Biggar and two minutes later, with Ihaia West on to change the Welshman, Serin produced a second of magic to get the scoreboard shifting. After taking the ball from a ruck on the Glasgow 22 he dabbed the ball via the line of defense, regathered and simply managed to contact down regardless of the efforts of Ollie Smith to flip him on his again over the road.

The scrum-half added the extras after which picked out 39-year-old Italian legend Parisse for a attempt on the posts after extra strain from the High 14 outfit after Glasgow had misplaced a line-out.

Serin added the extras after which picked up the third attempt after 25 minutes. Glasgow misplaced one other 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 introduced down on the road, Serin picked up and dotted down earlier than including a 3rd conversion.

Glasgow began the second half encouragingly, however their incapacity to flip strain into factors value them dearly. It was not till their eleventh incursion into the Toulon 22 that they managed to break their duck and that got here through a attempt from skipper Kyle Steyn within the fifty fifth minute from a neat transfer down the blindside of a lineout.

Earlier than then substitute scrum-half Benoit Paillaugue had added a penalty to prolong the lead to 24 factors. George Horne’s angled conversion of Steyn’s rating gave Glasgow hope, however two extra tries slammed the door shut so far as a comeback was involved.

The Fijian duo of Jiuta Wainiqolo and Vuidravuwalu scored them and Paillaugue transformed 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 surely was by no means going to be sufficient. West scampered over for the final attempt with two minutes to go and Paillaugue kicked one other conversion to full the scoring.