French foil Vale effort

Ebbw Vale players will be brushing up on their Spanish after just failing to get past French club Montauban on Saturday night.

The Welsh club arrived at the Stade Sapiac with a four-point advantage in the two-leg series, but the 13-point loss sends them into the Parker Pen Shield, and two matches home and away against Spanish side Madrid 2012.

Coach Mike Ruddock and his players were left to rue missed opportunities, as Vale stayed in touch with the French club but couldn't get within the crucial four-point margin.

"We're obviously disappointed," said Ruddock. "We spurned 11 points in shots at goal in the opening half and got bundled into touch when we should have scored, so it wasn't as if we were out-played."

Several of the Ebbw Vale players were unhappy with the performance of referee Giovanni Morandin, but Ruddock said he though the Italian had a good game.

"I've got no complaints with him. There's always the potential for trouble when you have a ref that can't speak English but he's a good referee."

Vale outside-half Mark Meenan opened the scoring with a fifth minute penalty before home centre Pierre Vermis waltzed in after the Vale players stopped defending, sure that Morandin had stopped play for a knock-on.

Instead, Morandin changed his hand signals to wave play on, and Montauban were in front.

A Vermis penalty goal extended the lead, but Ebbw Vale were unlucky not to draw level when a superb length-of-the-field backline move on the half-hour mark ended with winger Matthew Rowlands being scrambled into touch inches short.

The Ebbw Vale jumpers stole the Montauban throw from the line-out that followed and drove for the line.

They had a second go before the ball was spun wide, with full-back Richard Davies coming back on a perfect angle to score near the posts.

Meenan missed the conversion, adding to his three penalty-goal attempts that went wide. The misses were to prove crucial in the end.

Ebbw Vale lost lock Ockert Booyse to the sin-bin after an all-in brawl early in the second-half, and the French side went further ahead when full-back Herve Veillard waltzed through some poor defence to score near the posts. Vermis' conversion took Montauban to a 20-8 lead and Ebbw Vale's four-point advantage was looking fairly useless.

They refused to give up, however, and back row forward Kati Tuipolutu finished off a good move from a line-out on halfway to narrow the gap to seven points - or three if the first round advantage was taken into account.

But the Gwent side ran out of petrol in the dying minutes and three late penalty goals from Sebastien Fauque saw them out of the Cup and into Shield.

Montauban: Tries - P Vermis, H Veillard; Conversions - P Vermis (2); Penalties - P Vermis (2), S Fauque (3). Ebbw Vale: Tries - R Davies, K Tuipolotu; Penalties - M Meenan (2)