The new era of European club rugby has finally dawned but this was not quite the champagne start the marketeers possibly had in mind.
Harlequins will not be complaining, though, earning the first victory of the inaugural European Rugby Champions Cup with a dogged, character-laden success over a tenacious Castres team.
A tough, forward-dominated scrap was more a homage to the days of yore than a case of boldly going where no one else had gone before. It was not until 14 minutes from the end that the deadlock was finally broken, Danny Care diving gleefully on Nick Evans’ clever chip ahead to claim the first try in the tournament’s brief history.
Evans also contributed 20 immaculate points with the boot to reward Quins’ persistence against initially stubborn opponents. Turning the screw after the interval, the hosts will regard this as a highly encouraging result which has given them every chance of prospering in Pool 2. Next week they will make the shortest of away trips to High Wycombe to face Wasps and denying Castres a bonus point here was another hefty positive.
Luke Wallace, their busy flanker, won the man of the match award but their entire pack will be pleased with their efforts after a modest start to their Premiership campaign. “All these pools are going to be dog-eat-dog so this was a massive start for us,” said Conor O’Shea, Quins’ director of rugby. “That was not a weak Castres tight five out there.”
It was only 3-3 at the interval but O’Shea felt his side laid the foundations playing against the wind without necessarily gaining instant reward. Castres had not been beaten by Quins in four previous European meetings and with a talented pair of half-backs, Rory Kockott and Rémi Talès, alongside the Scottish internationals Richie Gray and Max Evans they looked a better side than their current league position of 12th might suggest.
The visitors, however, boasted a dire away record in the old Heineken Cup, winning just two games outside France in the whole of the last decade. Given they were champions of France two seasons ago and finalists last year their relationship with Europe has been more than a touch ambivalent and their fellow Top 14 side Brive’s 55-0 defeat in Gloucester the previous evening was a further reason to wonder to what extent a Friday night in south-west London would motivate them.
Neither side, as it turned out, found scoring easy and the only first-half points came from a penalty apiece for Kockott and Evans. On a mild, breezy evening, though, there was enough forward snap and crackle to make it an absorbing contest. The general view before kick-off was that this season’s tournament would contain fewer one-sided games than in previous years and there was nothing to contradict that theory as the two back-rows battled tirelessly for an edge at the breakdown.
It was a similar story after the interval, Quins briefly taking the lead for the first time only for a second Kockott penalty to punish the home front-row for one collapsed scrum too many. Evans swiftly returned the favour and, with rain starting to fall, the home supporters finally started to sense Castres might be wobbling.
Apart from one defensive hole found by the loose forward William Whetton, the latest top-level representative from a notable New Zealand rugby dynasty, it was Quins who were now enjoying the territorial supremacy and yet another scrum penalty awarded by an increasingly impatient Nigel Owens gave the home side a six-point cushion entering the final quarter.
In the past Quins might have found a way to blow their advantage but there was clearly a determination to stick an early flag in the new-look European map. Evans, as so often since he joined the club in 2008, was the architect of this morale-boosting triumph, his swift reactive kick giving Care time and space to slither into the record books as the opening try scorer in the Champions Cup. Having recently become a father for the first time, the England scrum-half will hope this is merely the start of a productive autumn.
Harlequins Brown; Yarde, Hopper, Lowe (Turner-Hall, 55),Tikoirotuma; Evans, Care (Dickson, 76); Marler (Lambert, 66), Ward (Buchanan, 68), Collier (Sinckler, 68), Matthews, Robson (Twomey, 72), Wallace, Robshaw, Easter.
Try Care. Con Evans. Pens Evans 6.
Castres Palis; Evans, Tuatara (Cabannes, 74), Combezou, Grosso; Talès (capt), Kockott (Garcia, 68); Taumoepeau (Lazar, 47), Mach (Rallier, 55), Montes (Fa’anunu, 47) Gray (Samson, 68), Faasalele, Diarra (Babillot, 55), Whetton, Bornman.
Pens Kockott 3.
Referee: N Owens (Wal) Attendance 12,618.
