Final pool matches will still have customary buzz

AS THE dreary fare of Twickenham’s star-studded cast underlined, even the Heineken Cup is not immune from the immutable laws of destruction and refereeing standards visited upon the game this season. But as the Munster-Sale, Toulouse-Glasgow and other games also showed, the H Cup is still the business, and there’ll still be the customary buzz around the final round of pool matches next weekend.

Only three teams – Munster, Harlequins and Cardiff – have qualified, and only the Blues look a nailed-on certainty for a home quarter-final, with another half dozen sides – Leinster, Wasps, Leicester, the Ospreys, Bath and Toulouse – still in the chase to win pools. Mathematically, there are another three sides still in contention for the two runners-up slots, namely Gloucester, Perpignan and Clermont, though either of the latter two would require an unlikely sequence of results to squeeze through via that route.

Thus, quite conceivably, hopes of any French interest in the tournament could well depend on the final games in Pool Five come Sunday afternoon, when Toulouse will almost certainly be obliged to beat Bath at the Rec to qualify for the last eight. If they don’t, it would be the first time in the tournament’s history that no French side has made the knockout stages. Indeed, there have always been at least two French qualifiers in the quarter-finals and only once has no French side failed to reach the semi-finals – two seasons ago when Biarritz and Stade Francais were knocked out in the last eight (along with Munster and Leinster) and the tournament was left with three English sides and one Welsh.

The prospect of no French side retaining Gallic interest beyond the third week of January would clearly not be good for the tournament, nor indeed would a finale dominated by one or two countries.

That said, the general level of results by the French sides in both European competitions constitute a new low for their much trumpeted Top-14, and should by rights be a source of embarrassment and concern for the game there. Extracting their head-to-heads, in the Heineken Cup, the French sides have a win-loss ratio of 45 per cent – easily their worst ever – while in the Challenge Cup it is just under 30 per cent. That is truly pathetic.

It is conceivable the Guinness Premiership could provide five of the last eight (and possibly five of the pool winners), but there are a couple of monumental head-to-heads to be resolved before it comes to that. The Ospreys effectively need to beat Leicester by more than seven points, or win with four tries or more while limiting the Tigers to no more than one bonus point, at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday evening to win Pool Three.

It’s the kind of Heineken Cup affair – serial winners against under-achievers – in which the traditional Euro power comes out on top. But it’s also the kind of English-Welsh affair which often inspires Welsh outfits, particularly at home, and one wouldn’t be surprised to see the Ospreys do it.

The Bath-Toulouse weekend finale is just as hard to call. One suspects Toulouse’s slip-up at home to Glasgow – their complacency, another poor performance by referee Wayne Barnes and the brilliant opportunism of the Evans brothers et al all contributed to the shock of the tournament – may yet be bad news for Bath. Hell hath no redemptory fury than wounded champions, as Sale can vouch for.

Typically, Munster benefited from the shock to the system they suffered against Ulster. In returning to more selective use of width, in their much improved aggression and clearing out at the breakdown, in the leadership of key players (O’Connell, Wallace, O’Gara, O’Leary, etc) and in their opportunism, Munster probably reached a new high this season.

Given the prospect of no French side in the last eight, it would be a good year for Munster to obtain a home quarter-final: which a bonus-point win would guarantee. But the trick for them will be not to become overburdened with that notion. One try by half-time, two by the hour would be minimum benchmarks, then start throwing caution to the wind. After all, there is also a scenario whereby a win without a bonus point could still be enough to have a Thomond Park quarter-final.

The same applies to Leinster, though the prospect of a tight five sans CJ van der Linde, Stan Wright, Leo Cullen and Malcolm O’Kelly is a huge cause for concern, not to mention Michael Cheika’s apparent determination to continue with Isa Nacewa – brilliant footballer though he is – in the pivotal outhalf role rather than exchange positions with Felipe Contepomi. The events of last Saturday will only have added to these reservations for the majority of Leinster fans.

Leinster may have an advantage in playing in the penultimate round of matches, for example knowing whether 20 or 21 points would be sufficient to earn one of the two best runners-up or even whether a home quarter-final is within range. But, as Cheika admitted, they will probably have to presume that Castres may not be of a mind to deny Wasps a bonus-point win.

Arguably Wasps would be the luckiest qualifiers of all. After all, they can have no complaints about being outscored 6-4 on match points in the two games with Leinster, or 6-2 on tries or 53-30 on aggregate, not to mention being outscored 15 tries to seven by Leinster in the pool to date.

Leinster have undoubtedly made heavy weather of winning what should have been an eminently winnable pool. Perhaps, though, we were all being a bit overtly critical of Leinster over the weekend, and it’s the three or four points that went a-begging in the Castres games which still rankle. But for that, Leinster would now be aiming for 23 or 24 points and a probable home quarter-final.

Viewed purely on its own, a bonus point defeat away to the reigning English champions and recent two-time Heineken Cup winners is not a bad result in itself at all.

Put another way, if a certain team in red had lost both props and their talismanic secondrow captain to injury, as well as the sinbinning of their other lock and their fullback, and all the in the first half after falling 10-0 down, might we have described it as a typically resilient and resourceful bonus point on the road?

gthornley@irishtimes.com