European Cup lifts Irish standards

Declan Kidney, the Munster manager, likens it all to shifting a boulder. Last season, the boulder gathered such momentum that Munster made it all the way to the Heineken European Cup final. This season it was stationary and at the bottom of the hill again, requiring a win in Ravenhill and then retention of the interprovincials to inch the boulder forward but by Saturday night they'd got it rumbling again.

Where there had been upwards of 40,000 supporters with them at the European Cup final in Twickenham last May, for the trip to Castres at the weekend the group of followers was more like an extended family. Perhaps fittingly therefore, they were able to savour the moment of victory at a more intimate level as Alan Quinlan and others posed for photographs on the pitch with family and friends. Toulouse airport was exclusively the preserve of the travelling party, and there were about 100 loyal souls dutifully waiting to extend a warm welcome to their heroes in Shannon. The biggest cheer, of course, was reserved for the legend in his own playing career, Mick Galwey.

Someone far wiser than this writer had remarked a week ago that Munster looked a bit like a team waiting for a challenge, but warned they could find their season over and the challenge behind them if they weren't careful. Munster took heed: faced with their biggest challenge this season in the Stade Pierre-Antoine, they tapped into the indomitable well of mental strength and collective-cum-individual decision-making in a crisis they showed last season.

As one of only two unbeaten sides in all competitions in Europe this season - Agen are the other - you could say that this is merely a seamless continuation of last season's winning habit, but it isn't. In fact, it's probably tougher having to come back from that harrowing one-point defeat last May in Twickenham. As Kidney reflected on the homeward journey: "This year what I admire so much is that they know the hurt that could be ahead of them and yet they're still willing to say `right, let's put ourselves out there and let's see what happens'. And in lots of ways that takes more courage than winning in Bordeaux and more so than in Colomiers. So each one is a step in its own right."

This squad are the kind of people you'd like with you in a bunker. Munster have made a virtue of not panicking, and somehow always do just enough to win. Whether it be taking a three-try to nil lead and hanging on for a three try to two win, or recovering from a two-try deficit to win by three tries to two away from home, they invariably make the right plays at the right time.

Undoubtedly, this is a carryover and extension of Munster's monopoly in the All-Ireland League, and especially the winning philosophy displayed by Shannon, ever the experts in winning games where there was only a score in it. Kidney and Niall O'Donovan undoubtedly have plenty of innate winners and mentally tough decision-makers on the pitch, but it has to go deeper than that again.

The Munster management generate a less pressurised atmosphere for their players than is the case elsewhere and especially in Leinster. It's striking to witness Munster at work and at play and see how relatively peripheral outside influences such as committee types are. The buck clearly stops with the management. This is not so clearly the case in Leinster. Far from it.

The question this writer was asked most last week, following Leinster's defeats to Connacht and Edinburgh Reivers, was "what's wrong with Leinster?" In part, though, it was an over-reaction, for last Friday was actually a rare home game and a unique instance of Leinster being able to pick the same side two games running, so the win was predictable enough.

Biarritz were abysmal, but even so the Leinster pack were excellent and, on a wet night, their talented backs ran in four fine tries. What's more, they can progress. Northampton's decline heaps more merit on Leinster's start and Edinburgh Reivers's win at Franklin's Gardens puts Leinster's defeat to the Scots in a better light.

Even so, it reduces Leinster's margin for error and to progress to the last eight they'll possibly have to win at Northampton this Saturday.

Once again, the lack of any television coverage of Munster's win was lamentable. At least BBC 2 Northern Ireland on Sunday allowed us the chance to see Ulster's brave effort at Saracens.

Perhaps Ulster's fitness levels - in one or two positions anyhow - weren't as good as their opponents', and this partially explains their last-quarter collapse after playing so damned well for the first hour. They also showed a tendency to panic. It was like a step back to a time - and a recent one at that - when Ireland would go well for an hour before being blown away by England in the final quarter.

ALL IN all, though, the advent of the European Cup, coupled with the full professionalisation of the provinces and the expanded interprovincials (both strongly argued for here before they happened) have reaped a rich dividend for Irish rugby. It is early days, admittedly, but the Irish have a 60 per cent winning record, along with the Welsh, the difference being that the preponderance of non-national players in their top clubs does less of a service for the national team.

The English lead the way with a 66 per cent winning record, but the French have plummeted to 33 per cent. Perhaps because they were always professional anyhow, the rest of European rugby has caught up with them or even surpassed them. Physically they don't seem to have developed in the last five years, and they don't have the edge that their previously superior fitness levels gave them.

Familiarity breeds contempt they say, and alas for them, they have lost some of their mystique.

Email: gthornley@irish-times.ie