Bath scored a dramatic 27-22 victory over Agen while Gloucester eased past Bordeaux 25-13 in their Challenge Cup fixtures on Thursday.
Francois Louw's last-minute try handed Bath a bonus point victory on a dramatic night in Agen.
Agen fly-half Raphael Lagarde seemed to have wrapped the game up for the hosts with a faultless kicking display, despite scoring only one try to Bath's four.
The hosts opened the scoring at the Stade Armandie when Benjamin Petre dove over. Lagarde added the extras, before Stephen Donald put the visitors on the board with a penalty kick. Lagarde added a penalty of his own, before Michael Claassens dove over to close the gap shortly before the interval.
Lagarde continued to keep Agen;s noses in front with some pin-point goal-kicking, before Kyle Eastmond and Donald dove over to put the visitors in the lead for the first time.
Nevertheless, another Lagarde penalty, his fourth of the second half, handed the home side a slended 22-20 lead with less than 10 minutes to go. Damien Lagrange's sin-binning let Bath back in the game however and skipper Louw powered over from short range to hand Bath the win.
The scorers:
For Agen:
Try: Petre
Con: Lagarde
Pens: Lagarde 5
For Bath:
Tries: Eastmond, Donald, Claassens, Louw
Cons: Donald 2
Pen: Donald
Yellow card: Lagrange
Gloucester took the early lead against Bordeaux when lock Will James scored in the corner after six minutes, before flyhalf Billy Twelvetrees doubled his side's advantage with a neat turn of pace to touch down in the corner. Both conversion attempts were missed however.
Bordeaux was unlucky not to score after Jimmy Cowan's foul on Thierry Brana went unnoticed, but Gloucester showed their class again in the 25th minute when James Simpson-Daniel's expertly-timed pass put fellow winger Charlie Sharples in at the corner. Twelvetrees again missed the conversion, but added three more to the score with a long range effort shortly before half-time.
Upon the re-start, Gloucester added their fourth try when Ben Morgan rampaged through the defence before off-loading to Sharples to score his second of the night. Twelvetrees made no mistake this time and added the extras.
The second half was a scrappy affair though as Bordeaux prevented the hosts from replicating their free-flowing football from earlier in the match. Bordeaux then had the final say of the match when flanker Gauthier Gibouin went over under the posts in injury-time for a converted try.
The scorers:
For Gloucester
Tries: Sharples 2, Twelvetrees, James
Con: Twelvetrees
Pen: Twelvetrees
For Bordeaux
Try: Gibouin
Con: Lopez
Pens: Sanchez 2
Yellow card: James
Comments
kybone says...
jamesliveinhope- I never said anything about group outcomes so i don't know why you mentioned that. i was simply pointing out that at the back end of last season and during the summer there was a lot of Prem bashing, not least by the PR reporters. So far this season the English sides have gone well. Take this group for example- 2 English teams and 2 French teams and after 2 rounds its currently 4 bonus point wins to the Prem clubs! Not too bad i'd say.
Posted 13:30 21st October 2012
jamesliveinhope says...
Erm @kybone, whilst the sentiment is pleasure to hear, there are no Irish sides in the Amlin, just the 1 Welsh side and, to my shame, I have had to get the atlas out 3 times so far to work out where a club was.
This is incredibly early to start predicting group outcomes based on 2 rounds - the French and English will have their squad depths tested by round 4. The Irish will have shaken off their ring rustiness and the Scots will actually start looking forward to home fixtures where they will be welcoming visitors to proper Scottish winters.
All to play for in my opinion.
Posted 21:51 20th October 2012
kybone says...
You know its not that long ago that one of the PR writers described the quality of the Premiership as 'deplorable'. Well i'd love to know what that bloke thinks about the rest of Europe because English teams are now 11 wins from 14 matches against their continental rivals. Not too bad...........so far!
Posted 06:18 19th October 2012