FORGET about anything that was happening in Las Vegas - this final was the real heavyweight bout.
It may have lacked finesse at times, and it descended into a slugfest at other moments, but the titans of French rugby dished up a wonderfully compelling contest at the home of English rugby.
Toulon came out of the red corner to be crowned champions of Europe for the third successive season, the first team to achieve that historic hat-trick. And while some of their players looked to be feeling their advanced years at times, they clinched the Champ-ions Cup trophy with a moment of individual brilliance by Drew Mitchell, their Australian winger, who ran a superb angle behind a line-out, beat five Clermont tacklers and swept over for a try.
You felt for Clermont, who had played some wonderfully ambitious rugby, especially in the earliest stages, but suffered the same fate, and against the same team, as they did in their last appearance in the final, in Dublin two years ago. Yet, while Clermont could probably claim to have been the better team in 2013, they could hardly make that argument yesterday. in short, the better team won.
There had been nothing remotely cagey about the opening stages, a passage of full-throttle rugby which left spectators as well as players gasping for breath. Even then, it was obvious that Clermont wanted to play at breakneck pace and run the legs off the ageing Toulon pack.
Yet if those Toulon forwards lacked pace, they were certainly not short of grunt. So while Clermont zipped the ball across the pitch and sent searching kicks deep into their opponents' half, Toulon had a significant edge in the tight, where their muscle earned them a succession of penalties.
Still, it had been a brace of kicks by Camille Lopez, brought in at fly-half after Brock James pulled up during the warm-up, that got Clermont off the mark. Leigh Half- penny answered by sticking his first kick between the posts in the 16th minute, but Clermont made a move soon afterwards when Wesley Fofana scored the first try of the match.
It came after a scrappy passage of aerial ping-pong, but When Toulon scrum-half Sebastien Tillous-Borde tried to clear from behind a ruck, his kick was half-charged by Morgan Parra, his opposite number. The ball broke left and into the arms of Wesley Fofana, who turned on the afterburners, swept past the despairing Chris Masoe and touched down in the corner.
At that stage, Clermont looked capable of running riot, but the Toulon pack began to gain traction and the territorial battle moved into the Clermont half. Halfpenny clipped over another couple of penalties to peg Clermont back to 11-9, and Toulon finally moved ahead in the shadow of half time when they ran back a loose clearance by Nick Abendanon and then strung together a decent sequence of phases before Giteau delivered the pass that sent Mathieu Bastareaud through for a try.
Toulon might have killed the contest two minutes after the break, but after a thunderous break by Steffon Armitage, Giteau got just a little too cute with trying an offload near the line when it looked far easier just to stretch out and score.
Even without more points, it was clear that Toulon's red tide was rising during the third quarter. Clermont had made a couple of tentative visits to the Toulon half during that time, but they had virtually been extinguished as an attacking force, seemingly bereft of ideas and belief.
Their frustrations became obvious when winger Noa Nakaitaci failed to field a kick and threw the ball away, conceding a penalty and three more points to Halfpenny. Critically, at 19-11, Toulon were then more than a converted try ahead, and in something of a comfort zone.
It also obliged Clermont to go for broke. And they did so spectacularly with a wonderful piece of contin- uity play in the 52nd minute. The move broke down near the Toulon line, but Bryan Habana ballooned his clearance straight into the arms of Abendanon. The English full-back had had an erratic game up to that point, but he delivered a brilliant chip, collected the ball and raced in for a try.
Then, though, Mitchell struck with his 69th minute try. Half- penny missed the conversion, so Clermont still had hope, but the Toulon defence were too strong and too well organised to yield any more points, and Clermont were on the canvas.
Clermont Auvergne: N Abendanon; N Nakaitaci (M Delaney, 67), J Davies, W Fofana, N Nalaga (A Rougerie, 55); C Lopez, M Parra (L Radoslavjevic, 56); V Debaty (T Domingo, 48), B Kayser (J Ulugia, 62), D Zirakashvili (C Ric, 68), J Cudmore (J Pierre, 10-17; 57-65), S Vahaamahina (J Pierre, 67), J Bonnaire, D Chouly (captain), F Lee (J Bardy, 55).
Toulon: L Halfpenny; D Mitchell, M Bastareaud, J Martin Hernandez (R Wulf, 66), B Habana; M Giteau, S Tillous-Borde; X Chiocci (A Menini, 48), G Guirado, C Hayman (captain), B Botha (R Taofifenua, 48), A Williams, J Smith (J M Fernadez-Lobbe, 58), S Armitage, C Masoe.
Referee: N Owens (Wales)
Attendance: 56,622
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