Clean sweep for Welsh

No less than in Ireland, they were singing in the valleys over the weekend. Taking their lead from Pontypridd's 18-11 win over Leicester on Friday night, in an historic weekend for Welsh clubs in the European Cup, all five representatives from the Principilaty recorded victories.

But after the general highs of the previous two weekends, the English clubs will have been crying into their bitter after an historic nadir in their Euro fortunes. In a remarkable weekend, not one of their six teams recorded a win, their best result being an anti-climactic home draw (22-22) for Pool Five leaders Gloucester against Colomiers.

The French rebounded from last week's solitary success, suffering only one defeat this weekend while the Scots, like the Italians, both drew a blank. English clubs still lead three of the six pools, but in essence each group has now developed into a three-way fight, with only Munster and Swansea preserving 100 per cent records.

In four of those cases, only the winners will progress and the inequities of a qualifying format in which only the two best runners-up will progress was highlighted by Swansea's facile 70-6 win away to L'Aquila yesterday. In the event of teams from different pools finishing with the same number of points, tries scored will be the deciding criteria in deciding ranking places for the last eight.

With the nine they conceded yesterday, Mike Brewer's Italians have now leaked 28 tries in three matches - making it almost certain that one of the two best runners-up will emerge from Pool Two. Swansea now lead the way (though they've still to visit Stade Francais and Wasps) from the French outfit after the latter's 40-10 home thumping of Wasps on Saturday.

Pick of the Welsh wins was undoubtedly Cardiff's eye-catching and convincing 32-23 win over Saracens, albeit a fractious, bad-tempered affair littered with five yellow cards. Nonetheless opportunist tries by Robert Howley and Craig Quinnell left the Welsh side 27-9 up at the break and in control. Their rematch in Cardiff next Friday could well be a judgement day of sorts.

Biarritz ended Edinburgh Reivers's unbeaten record and surprise tenure as leaders of Pool One with a 29-18 home win on Saturday evening, to ensure a three-way tie and leave Leinster on top by virtue of tries scored. Likewise Pau's 46-24 win away to pointless Glasgow Caledonians ensured a three-way tie in Pool Six.

In an ideal world Castres would have beaten Newport in Pool Three instead of losing to them by a point, as Declan Kidney admitted. Newport were indebted to the goal-kicking of Shane Howarth for their 2120 win, despite being outscored by three tries to nil. But Gregor Townsend missed two late conversions to compound two missed penalties earlier on, either of which would have put Castres four points clear before Howarth's seventh penalty in the fourth minute of injury time.

Allaying fears that either Alan Quinlan and Trevor Brennan might have been suspended for receiving a second yellow card of the tournament, an ERC spokesperson yesterday confirmed that no cumulative disciplinary procedure is in place.