Edinburgh vs Gloucester match report: Gloucester hold on for European Challenge Cup glory despite controversial Billy Meakes red card

They had to survive the torments of hell in a compelling second half, but Gloucester, two men short through their own indiscipline as the game reached its tipping point, found enough inner strength under duress to win the European Challenge Cup for the second time in a decade in front of a 14,000 crowd in south-west London. They deserved their title, but they made life awfully difficult for themselves.

Ross Moriarty, their highly aggressive blind-side flanker, was the first to see a card – one of the yellow variety – for dropping a knee into the back of the Edinburgh lock Fraser McKenzie at a ruck. Shortly afterwards the centre Billy Meakes hit his rival midfielder Sam Beard with a high tackle in open field and was shown a straight red. It could easily have cost his side the spoils.

The first try of an energetic opening half was also the only one, so it would have shone like a beacon even if it had been a long way short of brilliant. In the event, it was a gem: James Hook, Jonny May and Billy Twelvetrees, three players with plenty to prove on the international selection front, combined in holy trigonometry to concoct a score so clean in its execution that it was tempting to think it had come straight off the training field.

Twelvetrees was the man on the end of it, finishing at the sticks from 20 metres after cutting a perfect line on May, who had been freed by the sweetest of passes from Hook. Greig Laidlaw, facing the club he left at the end of last season, added the extras.

It was no more than Gloucester deserved, for having fallen behind to an early penalty from Laidlaw’s successor in the Murrayfield-based side, the much talked-about Sam Hidalgo-Clyne, they showed the best of themselves in a long spell of high-octane attacking rugby.

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Charlie Sharples, operating at full-back rather than on the wing and doing it extremely effectively, beat five men and might have gone all the way but for a textbook tap tackle from the Edinburgh No 8 Cornell du Preez. Gloucester were awarded a penalty by way of consolation and Laidlaw duly banged it over to square things up.

Remarkably, the alert Du Preez pulled a similar rabbit from his hat at the start of the second quarter. This time, it was May who set sail from distance after a fumble from Beard, and the wing made vast tracts of ground on the long diagonal before he was tickled on the ankle by the corner-flagging South African and hit the deck a couple of metres short of the line. All Gloucester gained this time was a one-man advantage, Anton Bresler departing to the sin bin for some ball-killing on the floor.

Again, there should have been more in it for them: the pressure earned them a series of five-metre scrums against a seven-man pack and with set-piece technicians as experienced as Richard Hibbard and John Afoa in their front row, a try looked odds-on. As it turned out, the Edinburgh loose-head prop Alasdair Dickinson won a penalty call against a thoroughly bemused Afoa, and the Scots promptly worked their way upfield to give Hidalgo-Clyne a second sighting of the posts. He did not spurn the opportunity.

This did wonders for Edinburgh’s morale: had Dickinson not performed his heroics at close quarters, they would have been 17-3 adrift rather than a mere four points shy of the Premiership club. Even though Mike Coman and Ross Ford messed up the restart between them and presented Laidlaw with another penalty, they reached the interval in an optimistic frame of mind.

That optimism did not look well placed when Laidlaw hit the spot with two more kicks on the resumption, one from gimme territory and the other from the very limit of his range. But Moriarty’s temporary banishment put Gloucester on the back foot for the first time and had Afoa not repaid Dickinson in kind for that earlier set-piece indignity, they might have conceded vital points.

Those points duly arrived on 65 minutes following Meakes’ transgression, which left Beard flat on his back and in need of a concussion check. Edinburgh laid siege against 13 men and eventually gave Ross Ford, their much-decorated international hooker, a sight of the line from the traditional front-rower’s distance of not very far.

But that was the last sign of Scottish joy. Gloucester, bolstered by Moriarty’s return from the cooler, closed down the game with some perfectly controlled possession rugby – a high risk approach, but one that paid handsome dividends.

Scorers: Edinburgh – Try Ford; Conversion Hidalgo-Clyne; Penalties Hidalgo-Clyne 2. Gloucester – Try: Twelvetrees; Conversion Laidlaw; Penalties Laidlaw 4.

Edinburgh: G Tonks (T Brown h-t); D Fife, S Beard (T Heathcote 63-67), A Strauss, T Visser; P Burleigh, S Hidalgo-Clyne; A Dickinson, R Ford, W P Nel, A Bresler (F McKenzie 49), B Toolis, M Coman (capt, S McInally 58), R Grant (H Watson 58), C Du Preez.

Gloucester: C Sharples; J May, B Meakes, B Twelvetrees (capt), H Purdy; J Hook, G Laidlaw; N Wood (Y Thomas 47), R Hibbard (D Dawidiuk 71), J Afoa, T Savage, T Palmer (M Galarza h-t), R Moriarty, M Kvesic, G Evans (J Rowan 69-73).

Referee: J Garces (France)