Davies sinks Saints with spectacular solo burst

Northampton 9 Llanelli Scarlets 18

Call it genius. The good folk of Northampton will no doubt describe it differently - you could almost hear John Leslie and his men breathing the words "jammy Welsh blighter" as they congregated under the posts to ponder an electrifying piece of try-scoring theatre from the unheralded and under-valued Barry Davies. But in the context of a forward-dominated slugfest straight out of rugby's Stone Age, the visiting full-back invented the wheel. If there is a more startling score this season, the European game will be blessed indeed.

Stephen Jones had just kicked the Scarlets into the lead at 11-9 when Paul Grayson, proud possessor of the most comprehensive range of tactical kicking ploys this side of heaven, rolled a clever little grubber kick behind the Welsh centres. Had any of half a dozen Northampton players gathered the ball, a home score would have been the consequence. Instead, Davies slid six, seven, eight metres on his behind to beat his opponents to this piece of prime possession, regained his feet in the flicker of a gnat's eyelid, cut a line through the fractured midfield and sprinted 40-plus metres to the posts. By adding the extras, Jones took his side two scores clear. Done and dusted, off to the bar.

"It was," admitted Wayne Smith, the ever-generous Northampton coach, "a fantastic try." The perpetrator himself seemed underwhelmed by it all. "There was a fair bit of luck involved," Davies whispered. "In fact, it was the weirdest try I've ever scored."

If the 22-year-old from Carmarthen is not one of the more familiar members of a beautifully balanced Llanelli back division, he must be among the most modest. On this occasion, he had nothing to be modest about.

Quite justifiably, Gareth Jenkins flatly refused to be humble on his behalf. "We'd worked on that particular Northampton threat and Barry picked up the language," the Wales coach-in-waiting said. "It was fantastic personal commitment on his part, because it was not a 50-50 ball. He made it 50-50 by playing it the way he did, and because their midfield had put the chase on, things opened up for him. As the whole thing unfolded, I told myself that here was the crux of the whole match. That was certainly the way it turned out."

This was a landmark day for the great Llanelli tactician, a coach whose wholehearted embrace of rugby's emotional dimension has never blinded him to the dark realities of the professional game. He was aware of two things as he led his side across Offa's Dyke for another tilt at the English élite: that after several near misses at Heineken Cup level, he had finally pieced together an all-purpose, all-weather squad capable of winning this tournament; and that Franklin's Gardens, on what was effectively a knock-out afternoon, would pose the most severe test of his skills as a strategist. He was right on both counts, and he finished ahead.

Llanelli punished Northampton's weak line-out and effectively neutered their hosts' dangerous ball-carrying front-rowers, Tom Smith and Steve Thompson, by dominating at close quarters through John Davies and the wonderfully neanderthal Robbie McBryde. The visitors also shaded the loose exchanges through Dafydd Jones and Simon Easterby, who somehow contributed a full 80 minutes' worth of thud and blunder despite starting the game with a broken right hand. Pretty much everything went to plan for the Scarlets and, as a result, Jenkins is now an even hotter bet to succeed Steve Hansen as national supremo.

Northampton might have chiselled out an early advantage, but Grayson was not at his best on the goal-kicking front. In his previous life as an outside-half obsessed with marksmanship to the exclusion of everything else, he would have nailed the penalties he fluffed after two and 25 minutes while offering little else. His performance yesterday showed how completely his game has changed. His first touch-finder put his forwards 60 metres upfield; his first little chip landed perfectly for Chris Hyndman and caused such strife in the Llanelli defence that Grayson was immediately granted a three-pointer in front of the sticks. Yet six more points went begging, and their absence from the scoreboard hurt the Midlanders.

Meanwhile, Llanelli were screwing the Northampton pack to the wall. Andrew Blowers, one of the great guttersnipe scavengers of the world game, shed buckets of sweat and a fair few beads of blood attempting to shore up the ruins, but the red-shirted hordes were in complete control for sizeable chunks of the contest. McBryde handled twice in the build-up to the visitors' opening try on nine minutes, finished in the left corner by Dafydd Jones, and had the Scarlets' backs showed a little more composure in contact and a smidgen of discipline on the floor, they might have scored again before the interval.

After Davies' try, the Llanelli pack were so dominant that they managed more than a dozen phases before tumbling over the ball at a ruck and incurring the displeasure of the referee. It was enough to try the patience of a priest, especially when Bruce Reihana hit overdrive for the first time in the match and went haring towards the left corner. As the Northampton full-back was about to claim a consolation score, Dwayne Peel hit him with the mother of all covering tackles. If it had not dawned on them before, the Saints knew then that they were over-matched.

Northampton: Penalties Grayson 3. Llanelli: Tries D Jones, B Davies. Conversion S Jones. Penalties S Jones 2.

Northampton: B Reihana; M Tucker, C Hyndman, J Leslie (capt), B Cohen; P Grayson (S Drahm, 71), M Robinson; T Smith, S Thompson (D Richmond, 76), R Morris (C Budgen, h-t), M Lord, M Connors, A Blowers, D Fox, G Seely.

Llanelli Scarlets: B Davies; G Evans, M Taylor, M Watkins, S Finau; S Jones, D Peel; I Thomas, R McBryde, J Davies, V Cooper (capt), A Jones, D Jones, S Easterby, S Quinnell.

Referee: D Courtney (Ireland).

HEINEKEN CUP: QUARTER-FINAL LINE-UP

Wasps v Gloucester
Llanelli v Biarritz
Munster v Stade Français
Toulouse v Edinburgh

(Games to be played on the weekend of 10-11 April)