Challenge Cup final: Gloucester bid to end season on a high in familiar territory as Cardiff Blues without Gethin Jenkins
Not one Gloucester player was named in England's squad to tour South Africa, but the likes of Jason Woodward and Henry Trinder can prove a point to Eddie Jones on Friday night
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Your support makes all the difference.Cardiff Blues will be without captain Gethin Jenkins for Friday’s European Challenge Cup final against Gloucester after the veteran prop was ruled out with the calf injury that he suffered in the semi-final victory over Pau.
Both sides made widespread changes for their final domestic games of the season, although while Cardiff edged rivals Ospreys to clinch a place in next year’s European Champions Cup, Gloucester were thrashed by Saracens and conceded their own place to Bath as a result. However, due to both Leinster and Racing 92 – Saturday’s Champions Cup finalists – already being qualified along with the Blues, Gloucester will claim the European winners’ spot regardless of Friday’s result.
That said, the end of the campaign has not been to Gloucester’s liking, and after conceding 40 unanswered points against Saracens last weekend, head coach Johan Ackermann has called for a big improvement to end the season in style and claim the club’s third final victory in this tournament.
"The past two weeks were a big disappointment for us, that's not how we wanted the season to end, but the good thing is we have this massive opportunity on Friday,” Ackermann said.
"It can put a lot of smiles back on faces and take a lot of pain away if we can lift that trophy.
"The Blues are a side who play similarly to us, they contest the breakdown very well and they're a very good side, but it's important that we play to our own style."
Gloucester, who make one change from the side that beat an understrength Newcastle Falcons in the semi-finals with Ackermann’s son, Ruan, preferred at No 8 to Ben Morgan, won the Challenge Cup back in 2006 as well as their most recent success three years ago, and just missed out in last year’s final in a 25-17 defeat by Stade Francais.
But they are not the only ones with European success in their history. Cardiff won this trophy in 2010, and although one of the players who lifted the trophy in Jenkins will be absent, his front-row partner-in-crime, Taufa'ao Filise, starts the match as the lone representative of that final-winning side.
Filise will turn 41 later this month on the same day as the Pro14 final, yet as the elder statesman of the Blues, you wouldn’t know it. "What he has achieved is phenomenal,” said director of rugby Danny Wilson, who will leave the club after the final. “What is he, 200?
"He's in incredible nick for his age and the amount of games he's put his body through. He still wants to train every Monday, every Tuesday, which we try to prevent him from doing and try to wrap him up.
"He's a credit to his family and to himself in terms of the way he's gone about his work.
"I hope he retires and enjoys his retirement but there might well be one more game in him."
The bookmakers have the Premiership side as favourite, but given the slump that English rugby currently finds itself in compared to it Celtic rivals, that is rather surprising. It’s worth remembering that Cardiff dispatched free-spending Pau to get to this stage, the same Pau side that thrashed Gloucester back in the pool stage.
But on the positive side for Gloucester, they do have plenty of star names capable of turning the game on its head – even if England head coach doesn’t believe so. Jones named his 34-man squad for the tour of South Africa next month without a single Gloucester player included – although scrum-half Ben Vellacott and full-backs Jason Woodward and Ben Loader are in the training squad that will meet in Brighton next week.
Woodward can certainly count himself unlucky, especially as Jones has just one out-and-out full-back available in Mike Brown. But the Wellington-born back, 27 years old, has two big chances to show Jones that he was wrong to leave him out of the tour party, and impress over the next week – starting with conquering Cardiff – he could yet find himself added to the squad to face the Springboks when Jones announces his updated squad after the Barbarians match at the end of the month.
Teams
Cardiff Blues: Gareth Anscombe; Owen Lane, Rey Lee-Lo, Willis Halaholo, Blaine Scully; Jarrod Evans, Tomos Williams; Rhys Gill, Kristian Dacey, Taufa'ao Filise; Seb Davies, Josh Turnbull; Josh Navidi, Ellis Jenkins, Nick Williams.
Replacements: Kirby Myhill, Brad Thyer, Scott Andrews, Damian Welch, Olly Robinson, Lloyd Williams, Garyn Smith, Matthew Morgan.
Gloucester: Jason Woodward; Tom Marshall, Billy Twelvetrees, Mark Atkinson, Henry Trinder; Billy Burns, Callum Braley; Josh Hohneck, James Hanson, John Afoa; Ed Slater, Mariano Galarza; Jake Polledri, Lewis Ludlow, Ruan Ackermann.
Replacements: Motu Matu'u, Val Rapava Ruskin, Fraser Balmain, Freddie Clarke, Ben Morgan, Ben Vellacott, Andy Symons, Tom Hudson.
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