Champions Cup: Racing 92 64-14 Scarlets
Last Updated: 18/01/16 10:45am
Racing 92 secured a home quarter-final in the Champions Cup with a 64-14 win over PRO12 side Scarlets on Sunday.
The victory was led by New Zealand centre Casey Laulala, who scored a hat-trick in the home side's nine-try thrashing.
It was a game that saw Scarlets fight back early in the second half, but the result was decided well before half-time as Racing 92 capitalised on a pair of yellow cards shown to the visitors.
Racing 92 have now qualified for the quarter-finals of the Champions Cup, while Scarlets cannot progress any further in the competition.
It didn't take the French side long to get scoring underway, with Juan Imhoff rounding off a try on the back of good interplay with fellow winger Louis Dupichot to make it 10-0 after Dan Carter added a conversion to his earlier penalty.
Scarlets lock Maselino Paulino was then sent to the sin bin for a high swinging arm on Yannick Nyanga, and the visitors were dealt a further blow when DTH van der Merwe was shown a yellow card for lifting Laulala past the horizontal.
The two-man advantage paid off immediately for Racing, who dotted down through Laulala and No 8 Antonie Claassen within the space of four minutes, with Carter converting both scores to hand his side a 24-0 lead after just 26 minutes.
The bonus point was secured when Dupichot danced through the visiting defence to score under the poles, before Laulala scored his second for a 38-0 lead at half-time.
Scarlets started the second half the more energetic of the two sides, with Paulino running a superb line before offloading to Van der Merwe for the visitors' first try of the game.
A series of penalties to Scarlets then followed, before the referee lost his patience with Racing and sent Mike Phillips to the bin for ten minutes.
When Gareth Davies sniped through the Racing defence to score Scarlets' second it looked like an unlikely comeback could possibly be mounted. But Racing added a penalty try in the 57th minute, and Imhoff crossed for his second score three minutes later to make it 52-14 and end any glimmer of hope for the Welsh side.
Replacement Johan Goosen scored Racing's eighth with ten minutes remaining and it was Laulala who rounded things off in emphatic style with his third try of the afternoon with seconds left on the clock.