Heineken as potent a brew as the Super 12

James Hammond reports on Leicester celebrations and Stade commiserations

Leicester's players went on a riverboat trip on the Seine last night. In truth it was probably the only way of keeping their feet on the ground after the most pulsating final in the short six-year history of the Heineken Cup.

But there was only desolation in the Stade Français camp and utterly no consolation for Diego Dominguez, their Argentine fly-half whose peerless kicking produced all of their 30 points. Stade's own ground is across the road and with the sun shining and four-fifths of the crowd decked in the Parisian side's blue colours it seemed that the day belonged to the French club.

'We tried to score tries but we ran into a wall,' said Christophe Juillet, Stade's No 8 and captain. 'The Leicester defence was just so organised, so remorseless and that was as intense as any international I have ever played. It was just so frustrating that we dominated the game in so many phases but it is our fault that we failed to score tries.'

John Connolly, the Queenslander who coaches Stade, was at a loss to explain why his side were unable to breach that wall, a defence organised by England's Phil Larder. 'The game was as hard as any Super 12 match but I just have to take my hat off to Leicester. They play an on-the-edge type of game. But you are always going to score penalties against them.'

Austin Healey, the scrum-half converted to fly-half late in the game in an attempt to prise open the Stade defence, revealed afterwards that his injured knee had made him doubtful for the match and that he had been unable to run properly 48 hours earlier. He hardly looked like an invalid, though, two minutes from time when his last lung-burning run sliced open the defence and set up Leon Lloyd for his second score.

'No one panicked,' said Healey. 'We had given away so many stupid penalties but we thought we could get back into the game and we knew that many of our supporters had paid the equivalent of two weeks' wages to get here. We didn't want to let them down and that's what drove us forward in those closing stages.'

His director of rugby Dean Richards paid tribute to the courage of his players who had found themselves falling 21-14 behind towards the end of the third quarter with only 14 men on the pitch.

Richards said: 'It is an awesome trophy to lift. To pull off what we've done this year speaks volumes for the players. I said little at half-time but it felt we'd been kicking away too many balls and we had to take the game by the scruff of the neck.

'But I didn't feel we'd lost it even in those closing stages when Dominguez scored that drop goal. There had been other occasions during the season when we pulled games right out of the fire at the end. We knew that this was almost a home game for Stade and that we couldn't be blasé about them. That's why we've stayed very focused for the last three weeks even when we've had to play play-off games. These have acted as dress rehearsals for the big stage out there.'

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