Peter Jackson's season finale

A weekend which broke all box-office records with a combined attendance of 127,966 for the two finals finished with the Blues carrying home Wales' first European trophy from Marseille, a gleaming symbol of their status as a new force on the fields of France.

By landing the Amlin Challenge Cup and rising one place to fifth in the rankings for next season's Heineken Cup, they displayed the ruthless streak of real champions.

No sooner had Toulon lost their English navigator than Cardiff began turning one man's pain into a collective agony for the entire club and an army of fans almost 50,000 strong.

In next to no time they had erased the spectre of another final being turned into a Mardi Gras for another French team in red and black, as Toulouse had done in Paris less than 24 hours earlier en route to reimposing their European rule.

As the multitude began cramming into the Place du Capitole to welcome the Heineken crown back to its spiritual home by the banks of the Garonne, Cardiff Blues and Toulon were bringing the European club season to an unforgettable climax exactly 200 miles away down in Marseille. Rarely can one man's exit have had as profound an effect on his team as Wilkinson's had on Toulon.

The team representing a famous old naval port of Napoleonic grandeur had suddenly lost its rudder, radar and half their rigging in one fell swoop. Within twenty minutes of their fly-half hobbling off to the thunderous sound of 'Jon-nee, Jon-nee' from his massive French fan club they had been blown out of the water, torpedoed by three tries which turned the game inside out and upside down.

The process of going from seven points behind to twelve in front began with Jamie Roberts cruising over between the posts, unable to resist cocking an ear to the deafening silence among the Toulon legions massed behind the goal. He knew then that it would be only a matter of time, that his stylish centre partner Casey Laulala and a pack featuring monumental contributions from Bradley Davies and Martyn Williams among others, would supply the depth charges.

'Jonny gives them so much direction that I'd be lying if I said that his departure didn't give us a lift,' Roberts said. 'Because he's such a general, everyone knew this was our chance to go for the jugular and that's exactly what we did.'

He could say that again. Toulon had shown the first signals of distress almost before the medics could get Wilkinson to the touchline, long before Leigh Halfpenny and Davies, the all-dancing lock, put them out of their misery with the second and third tries.

Maybe it was the heat but, whatever the reason, the French championship semi-finalists managed to lose the plot and their heads simultaneously, a mental deterioration highlighted by their decision to run a penalty from point-blank range just before Wilkinson took a knee in the back while bumping around in heavy traffic in the Blues' 22.

Every winning team needs a bit of luck and the Blues had theirs in not conceding a try which would have gone close to breaking the world record for the fastest, held by the Kiwi-Scot, John Leslie, at nine seconds.

Juan Fernandez Lobbe's decision to run the penalty rather than have Wilkinson kick his team 10 points clear proved almost as extravagant as his decision to pass inside rather than out for a try straight from the kick-off. He repeated the same blinkered blunder in an almost identical scenario on the opposite wing 15 minutes later.

The Blues, their high-speed creative skills underpinned by heroic defending, made him pay a fearful price and the passionate home fans suffer in the frying pan sizzle of the wonderful Stade Velodrome.

They came in their tens of thousands to make it an occasion worthy of any Cup final. Paris before almost 80,000 the previous evening had been a tough act to follow but Toulon turning out en masse made this an occasion in its own right. Far from being an anti-climactic case of after the Lord Mayor's show, the players' high-octane response before almost 50,000 brought the European season to an unforgettable finish.

Toulon will have the whole summer long to rebuke themselves for losing a match which they had under control at 13-6 when Wilkinson's back seized up, a factor which Blues coach David Young acknowledged as 'key' to the outcome.

'Whenever we put them under pressure, Wilkinson was always able to relieve it,' he said. 'They weren't able to do that after he left.

'The difference between the teams was the character and determination of our players to win the game.'

The rebuke which will concern Lobbe & co. most came from their presidential creator, Mourad Boudjellal. 'Not to take a penalty when the points are there to be taken is unacceptable,' he said. 'We did not respect Cardiff who are a great team. I am angry and being angry gives me energy.

'Let's say that this season we have flirted with the trophies we wanted to win. Next season we will sleep with them....'

When his team was drifting towards the rocks without Wilkinson, Boudjellal would have been forgiven had he asked himself a serious question about his other expensive fly half import, Felipe Contepomi like: 'Where is he?'

Ironically, the Argentinian had been excluded from the bench because of a passport complication which means he is no longer classified as an EU player but a foreign one and only two are allowed in the matchday 23. Contepomi would have restored some control and steered his team in the right direction.

Cardiff, to their credit, were good enough to exploit his absence for all it was worth. All the stronger for having been denied a place in last year's Heineken final by the lottery of a penalty shoot-out, the Blues will be a team to avoid next season. The four clubs ranked above them - Munster, Toulouse, Leinster, Leicester - will be happy to give them a guaranteed wide berth, at least until the quarter-finals.

'There is no reason why we cannot go all the way but there are a lot of really good teams out there,' Young said.

'We're not a great team yet. We're a good one well capable of improving. We will certainly be in the hunt next season and no team will under-estimate us. To win a European final in France is a big achievement.'

Too right, it is. Toulouse gave the Blues, and everyone else, a very clear idea of what it takes to win the most glittering prize of all.

Back on their pedestal as supreme champions, they continue to set standards which most clubs can only dream of. In overwhelming a gallant but under-powered Biarritz to win the Heineken for the fourth time, Toulouse did it the old-fashioned way, demonstrating precisely why a destructive scrum is still the mightiest weapon of all.

Their technical excellence in taking Biarritz apart at the seams eliminated any danger of a retreating Imanol Harinordoquy repeating the match-winning heroics from No8 which had done for Munster and the Ospreys in previous rounds. That there were only two points in it at the end flattered the runners-up and short-changed the champions.

Just the one team had beaten Toulouse in Europe all season, the Blues - 15-9 at home in the pool stage last December before losing the away leg 23-7, a setback which diverted them into the Amlin instead as one of the three highest-ranked non-qualifiers from the Heineken.

There was no victory parade through the Welsh capital even though they had a trophy to parade, unlike the one planned for their footballing landlords at the Cardiff City stadium, had they won the Premier League eliminator at Wembley and reached the promised land.

The Blues have still to reach theirs. They know now that they have what it takes to go the full distance but they will have to be quick about it before their 'Nugget' of an openside, Williams, on this evidence still peerless after all these years, runs out of time and Xavier Rush runs out of gas.

The Blues ought to be in with a serious shout of winning The Big One next season, all the more so with Dan Parks coming from Glasgow to give them more control and Rush hoping to stay despite the small matter of having signed a contract to play for Ulster.