YESTERDAY there were shadows, and only shadows of the Cardiff Blues team that went so tantalisingly close to last year's Heineken Cup final. They possessed too much power for Sale and in Ben Blair they had too much goalkicking precision not to capitalise on their forward superiority.
In all likelihood this 36-19 victory will not be sufficient to see them qualify for the quarter-finals - Toulouse will probably end those slimmest of dreams this afternoon at home to Harlequins - but at least they found a performance that left them something to smile about in what has been the most trying of seasons.
In conditions unsuitable for any classic back play, this remained a compelling enough contest, especially the first half, throughout which the English visitors remained close - at least on the scoreboard. Indeed the first try came from Sale when Sisa Koyamaibole capitalised on a clumsy Cardiff scrum. He picked up deftly to smash through Xavier Rush and Richie Rees. Until he left on the hour mark the Fijian was at the heart of what developed into something of a rearguard effort.
His opposite number, Rush, relentlessly picked up the pace of his game and began to surge and set targets for the more experienced Welsh pack.
It was not until a Blair penalty on 20 minutes that the Blues reclaimed a narrow lead but a sense of inevitability was seeping into the stadium.
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Sale tackled with great tenacity but were undone by their ill discipline. Further penalties conceded allowed the immaculate Blair and Leigh Halfpenny to push the lead out to 12-5 at half time.
The Blues came out for the second half determined to turn the screw further and in the space of six magnificent minutes they raced away from Sale and all but won the game. Two minutes into the second half a smart inside break from Halfpenny carried him to within five metres of the Sale try line, and when Lee Thomas spilled the ball out backwards from the breakdown Rees scampered into the corner. Almost inevitably, even from the touchline, Blair bisected the posts.
Four minutes later, Rees was the architect as he pulled the Sale defence wide and slipped a subtle inside pass to Tongan prop Taufa'ao Filise. He bludgeoned further forward before popping a delicate pass to fellow tight-five forward Bradley Davies, who dived over as Cardiff threatened to overpower Sale.
That this did not occur was largely down to their regular ringmaster, Charlie Hodgson. The fly-half, who was recalled to England's Saxons squad last week, was far from his best. His kicking both from hand and ground lacked the accuracy of his Cardiff counterparts, but two sublime moments showed off his instinctive rugby talent.
With the Blues pulling away, Hodgson almost stopped time to bring his team back into it. Just two minutes after the Davies try he received the ball 25 metres from the Cardiff line, stepped a single pace infield and the defence froze. In that split second of delayed opportunity he flicked the ball into the arms of the onrushing James Gaskell.
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The loping lock sprinted on to give Mathew Tait a simple score. Blair restored the Blues to a comfortable 17-point lead seven minutes later before Hodgson again checked the Blues defence and unleashed a sizzling pass which Gaskell caught as he ran into the corner for a try that lifted Sale's hopes.
They were 10 points behind with 10 minutes or so to go and while victory never seemed likely, one more try would have given them two losing bonus points. That would have kept their qualification hopes alive, if tenuously.
That fourth try was not to be and the prime reason was the power of the Cardiff pack, who suffered at the scrums in the first half but had Sale marching unceremoniously backwards by the end of the game.
Referee Romain Poite gave Martin Halsall a yellow card as the English pack crumpled under pressure. Last weekend he gave Tim Payne of Wasps one, too, under identical circumstances. To those who take their scrummaging seriously the French official is a godsend. He even penalised scrum-halves for crooked feeds when the pressure came on their own packs.
Poite was very good; Cardiff were not quite in his class but they were good enough to remind the rest of Europe that here is a region that should be qualifying more often than not for the quarter-finals of this tournament.
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The win, and the three tries, will almost certainly prove to be too little and this performance came too late to bring a serious smile to anyone but the Toulouse team.
Star man: Xavier Rush (Cardiff)
Scorers: Cardiff: Tries: Rees, Davies, Rush Cons: Blair (3) Pens: Blair (4), Halfpenny Sale: Try: Koyamaibole, Tait, Gaskell Cons: Hodgson (2)
Yellow cards: Cardiff: M Williams Sale: Halsall
Referee: R Poite (France)
Cardiff: B Blair; L Halfpenny, C Laulala (Shanklin 70), J Roberts, T James; C Sweeney (Norton-Knight 79min), R Rees (Cooper 72min); G Jenkins, G Williams (Thomas 71min), T Filise (G Powell 67min), B Davies, D Jones (Tito 57min), A Powell, M Williams, X Rush.
Sale: N Macleod; M Cueto, M Tait, L Thomas (Kennedy 60min) B Cohen (Doherty 70); C Hodgson, D Peel (Wigglesworth 55min); E Roberts, N Briggs (Jones 57min), M Halsall, D Schofield, J Gaskell (Jones 78min), C Fearns, D Seymour (Kerr 66min), S Koyamaibole (Abraham 62min)