Edinburgh 14-21 Cardiff Blues: Edinburgh sing the Blues

Edinburgh's disappointing European campaign ended just as it started with a narrow loss to the Blues. While the home side scored the only try and led for much of this match they were ultimately undone by poor discipline. Edinburgh conceded nine penalties within range of their posts and Cardiff kicked seven of them. Game over and a depressing Heineken Cup record for the season of just one win from six.

Two of those penalties went to Dan Parks (who also missed a brace) while Welsh winger Leigh Halfpenny added another five, including three in a five-minute spell midway through the second half which effectively decided the outcome of this match. With these strikes the Blues went from 9-14 behind to leading 18-14 and they never looked back, dominating the final 15 minutes. Edinburgh had one last throw of the dice - by now Greig Laidlaw was playing at fly-half - but they turned over the ball inside the Blues' 22 and, when the play went to the opposite end, yet again the home indiscipline gave Halfpenny a simple shot at goal to make it safe.

"I never criticise referees and I'm not going to criticise the referee individually," said Edinburgh coach Rob Moffat after the match, "but I think the game is too complicated, I think the laws are too complicated so it comes down to interpretation.

"We were probably over-enthusiastic. I thought that we defended well for long periods and when we had a crack at the ball we just went for it and we got penalised. We gave away a lot of cheap points but I couldn't fault the effort out there. I felt that we were on top at 14-9 and if we could have got the next score it might have given us the confidence to kick on."

This match might have been a dead rubber as far as the Heineken Cup was concerned but it did throw up a few intriguing head to heads, with Parks in direct competition with Chris Paterson; the current Scotland fly-half against the man many believe should have been in the post for the better part of a decade.

It was a pretty much a score draw, with both men kicking (and missing) at goal, although in open play Paterson did not pale in comparison with Scotland's regular ten. There was canny distribution from the Gala man, he kicked with authority and made the odd little break to remind everyone of what might have been. Against that, the Edinburgh fly-half was ushered down the No.10 channel by the Blues defence early on in proceedings, where Paul Tito stripped the ball off him before Paterson could blink.

The match was scarred by early injuries to Simon Webster and Casey Laulala, both of whom left the field after 15 minutes. It had been Webster's first appearance this season in the starting XV, and Moffat handed flanker Denid Denton and prop Lewis Niven their first starts for Edinburgh.

With just pride to play for both teams put the ball through the hands, although there were enough mistakes to interrupt the flow of the game when the defenders couldn't manage it. After their humbling against Northampton in the English Midlands last weekend this was a much-improved showing from Edinburgh. The home defence in particular was tight and organised and kept their line intact, although only at the cost of all those penalties. There was one five-minute spell midway through the second half when Cardiff threw the kitchen sink at the Edinburgh line but got no change from a mean-minded defence.

Both sides had their moments with the ball in hand. Jamie Roberts broke the Edinurgh line at the first attempt and winger Lee Jones enjoyed a couple of gallops for the home team, especially at the start of the second half, although he needs to look after the ball a bit better.

Edinburgh also came up with the only try of the match, albeit in somewhat fortuitous circumstances.

James King was on the field for Webster and the former Melrose man put a clever grubber kick into acres of space behind the Cardiff defence. The bobbling ball somehow evaded the chasing Nick De Luca but just as a pink Cardiff jersey was about to fall on the ball Ben Cairns hacked ahead again and won the race to the ball.

Cairns also had a great scoring chance early in the second half of this match after an interception by his midfield partner De Luca deep inside Cardiff territory. De Luca fed Cairns and the slight centre pinned his ears back and made for the line, finding De Luca with a return pass when his path was eventually blocked. With the Blues in disarray it seemed as if Edinburgh must score, only for King to get penalised for holding onto the ball at the bottom of a breakdown.

That proved Edinburgh's best chance of the second half, perhaps their only one, and the game was slowly slipping from their grasp thanks to Halfpenny's boot and a yellow card collected by Alan MacDonald after the flanker erred once too often for the Irish referee. Cardiff tightened their grip on this game the longer it went on and it was only appropriate that the final points went to man of the match Halfpenny.

Scorers: Edinburgh: Try: Cairns. Pens: Paterson 3. Cardiff: Pens: Parks 2, Halfpenny 3.

Edinburgh: Thompson; Jones, Cairns, De Luca (Laidlaw 65 min), Webster (King 15 min); Paterson, Blair; Jacobsen, Ford, Niven, MacLeod, Lozada (Mckenzie 57 min), Denton, MacDonald, Grant (McInally 57 min).

Cardiff: Czekaj; Halfpenny, Laulala (Hewitt 15 min), Roberts, Mustoe; Parks (Sweeney 51 min) Slater; Yapp (Hobbs 70 min), Thomas (Williams 64 min), Andrews, Jones, Tito, Pretorius, Williams, Molitika.

Referee: J Lacey (IRFU). Attendance: 2,379.