European Cup round-up: Gloucester's bid to reach the knockout stages of the Heineken Cup was thwarted by four late penalties as Jerome Miquel kicked Agen to a 26-18 victory tonight.
The French side simply had too much power and mobility in every position in the first half of a thrilling game at the Stade Armandie and Gloucester ran out of numbers to cover them.
Their unstoppable Fijian winger Rupeni Caucaunibuca opened the scoring before Arnaud Mignardi ran in Agen's second try from a delightful move.
As the visitors began to assert some pressure they revealed a few chinks in Agen's armoury and Iain Balshaw scored out wide.
Caucaunibuca continued to threaten but was halted by replacement centre Peter Richards inside Gloucester's 22 and from there the visitors rallied with Richards eventually running in after a flowing move.
Ryan Lamb added the conversion and then a penalty to nudge Gloucester into a four point lead but they conceded three sloppy penalties in 10 minutes and Miquel put Agen five points clear before adding another penalty.
In tonight's other game Biarritz kept up their 100 per cent record in Pool Six with a convincing 45-3 win over Italian side Overmach Parma.
Biarritz made it five wins from as many matches as centre Marcelo Bosch claimed two tries and scrum-half Julien Dupuy kicked five conversions.
There were also tries for Petru Balan, Benjamin Noirot, Serge Betsen, Martin Gaitan and Philippe Bidabe. Parma's solitary reply came with a penalty from Alejandro Canale.
