Hard work undone by Fabiani’s try at the death

JOHN Mulvihill must wait for his first competitive Blues victory after Zebre overturned a 21point deficit to condemn his side to a third straight defeat.

The Blues looked to be cruising to a comfortable win with three first half tries from Olly Robinson, Kristian Dacey and Gareth Anscombe. But Zebre refused to give up scoring tries from Carlo Canna, Johan Meyer, Francois Brummer and Oliviero Fabiani with Canna contributing 11 points in total.

Blues made the perfect start with two tries in the first four minutes. Samoa centre Rey Lee-Lo burst clear with a 30m run to put Robinson over for the first.

Scrum-half Tomos Williams was the architect of their second with a neat little chip over the top of Zebre’s defence before collecting at full strength and offloading to Owen Lane. The ball was quickly recycled with Dacey powering over from short range.

The visitors were in no mood to take their foot off the gas with outside-half Anscombe showing his class when he glided past Zebre’s defenders to touch down under the posts.

But just as the game looked to be slipping away from Zebre they hit back with a try of their own. After applying their first bit of pressure on the Blues line fly-half Canna crossed at the corner, leaving it 21-7 at half-time.

The second half was a scrappier affair and Blues had to wait until the 51st minute before extending their lead with Anscombe knocking over a simple penalty.

Zebre began to enjoy some territory, building pressure in the Blues 22 to allow Meyer to power his way over from short range to cut the deficit to 10 points.

Despite having been on the back foot for the majority of the game the hosts closed the gap to a mere three points with a scintillating try when Canna ghosted his way past two defenders before Brummer over at the far left-hand corner.

Michael Bradley’s side now had the bit between their teeth with the Blues forced to defend for their lives as the Italians launched a series of driving lineouts.

And with the clock having turned red Fabiani smashed his way over the try line to send the home crowd into raptures.