Drop of luck spares Gloucester blushes

The brief radio reports on Saturday night talked of a late drop goal giving Gloucester a one-point victory in a dramatic climax.

The listener could not begin to guess from such a precis as to the bizarre, almost surreal, nature of the deciding score and the remaining minutes. Most of the 10,800 capacity Kingsholm crowd were sketchy as to the precise details long before vigorous celebrating served to cloud the memory of the conclusion of one of the best cup-ties in years.

Suffice to say that several thousand years of experience of rugby from the lowest to the highest levels had never seen the like.

Elton Moncrieff's attempted drop goal from under the Llanelli posts was heading drunkenly wide of the goalposts and at hoarding height when fate intervened in the substantial shape of visiting prop Phil Booth. The ball ricocheted from his arm and climbed over the bar for the three points to seal a 28-27 win which saved Gloucester's season and made a home quarter-final in the Heineken Cup the likeliest scenario. A poor option by the scrum half and a poorer execution could scarcely have produced a better outcome. Was it the best drop goal of his life, someone asked of the perky little Australian? 'No,' replied the player who confessed that he had exhausted his repertoire of basic Anglo Saxon even before the ball changed trajectory.

Further reflection brought further illumination. 'It was my worst.' Technically, that may be true but a lucky deflection saved one man from humiliation and another very possibly from the sack. 'I would have been the most hated man in Gloucester,' Moncrieff suggested had the Welsh held on for what would have been a deserved victory. Philippe Saint Andre, Gloucester's French coach, mentioned the word 'pressure' so often and talked so much about votes of confidence from owner Tom Walkinshaw that you felt defeat might have precipitated his departure. 'But for that piece of luck I would have been in the sheet,' he said graphically. He did not mean in a bed of roses. Llanelli coach Gareth Jenkins would have been similarly in trouble had moves by the RFU to protect referees from abuse been more advanced and taken up by other rugby unions. 'The referee really crucified us,' he said with remarkable bluntness. 'He was not fair. He took a huge amount away from us.' There was an element of truth in the remarks of Jenkins, however. A French referee can be one of two things, according to the rest of the rugby world. A devotee of laissez-faire or a whistling traffic policeman. Didier Mene would not have looked out of place on point duty at the Place de Concorde. That he penalised Llanelli much more than Gloucester reflected the pressure the Welsh were under up front, though not entirely. A penalty try without due warning seemed extreme for a line-out offence.

Tactically, both sides got it wrong. Gloucester, with forward dominance, seemed keen to move the ball wide through an unimaginative midfield; Llanelli kept it tight despite the creativity and pace of centre Dafydd Jones and flying winger Mark Jones, who combined for a brace of tries for the latter with just about their only two opportunities. Most harmful to the Llanelli cause were the yellow cards shown to Dafydd Jones and Salesi Finau.You cannot win such tight games by playing 20 minutes with 14 men.

Simon Mannix, who kicked the rest of Gloucester's points, will spend this week impressing upon his team-mates not to take Roma too lightly in the Eternal City this weekend. He spent two years in Italy and knows their strengths.