ROUND FIVE of the pool stages in the Heineken Cup looms as a season-defining weekend for Irish rugby. Munster and Leinster go into their Pool One and Two English-Irish summit meetings against Sale Sharks and Wasps still masters of their destiny, writes Gerry Thornley.
Victories for both would effectively ensure qualification for the quarter-finals and leave them well placed – with Montauban and Edinburgh to come the following weekend – to push on for home quarter-finals. Irish rugby could go into the Six Nations comforted in the knowledge that interest in Europe, come March, has again been secured and thus in relatively buoyant mood.
Defeat for either Munster or Leinster this weekend, however, would leave them scrambling for survival in the pool finale as, most probably, one of the two best runners-up. There are, of course, scenarios where either could lose this weekend and still top the pool.
Were Munster to lose at home, even with a bonus point, to Sale this Friday at Thomond Park, however, they would then need a favour from Clermont when Vern Cotter’s side go to Edgeley Park on Saturday week, as well as a win in Montauban, for the champions to have any chance of topping the pool. The chances of Munster or anyone else in Pool One of going through as one of the best runners-up are remote – such are the flaws and vagaries of the Heineken Cup.
Leinster, admittedly, would still lead Pool One were they to obtain a bonus point in defeat to Wasps at Twickenham – provided they also deny the English champions an offensive bonus point. As they took a five-point match haul from their 41-11 win at the RDS clash last October, they would still have their destiny in their hands when they entertain Edinburgh (for whom no favours can be expected) on Sunday week.
Even so, their hopes of a home quarter-final would be all but dashed by a defeat in Twickenham this Saturday, while a defeat by more than seven points would leave them reliant on an unlikely favour from Castres on Sunday week at home to Wasps, or clinging to a slim chance of qualifying as one of the two best runners-up.
To all intents and purposes, therefore, round five looms as the make-or-break weekend of the season so far for Irish rugby. Ever since the inception of the Heineken Cup, the performances of the provinces in Europe (and, let’s face it, especially Munster) have been the heartbeat of the game here.
Munster alone have qualified for the quarter-finals for a record 10 successive seasons, and have been accompanied in the knock-out stages by Leinster on five occasions and Ulster once when, of course, the latter won the 1998-99 tournament.
To put this in context further, the last time an Irish province failed to qualify for the last eight in the Heineken Cup was the season before, 1997-98. Coincidentally or not, that was the last year Ireland ended up with the wooden spoon when finishing pointless in the then Five Nations. The only other year when no Irish side qualified for the knock-out stages was the previous season when, again, Ireland ended up with the wooden spoon.
This weekend’s English-Irish affairs also call uncomfortably to mind the round six match-ups between Munster and Leicester at Thomond Park and Gloucester v Leinster at Kingsholm two seasons ago. Both Irish provinces had qualified for the last eight, but defeats in that final round of pool matches consigned them to away quarter-finals a fortnight after the conclusion of the Six Nations, when Munster lost their grip on the Cup in Stradey Park to Llanelli, and Leinster were knocked out at Wasps.
Of course, Munster showed last season for the third time that it is possible to win an away quarter-final with their stirring victory in Gloucester, but coming so soon after the eight-week hiatus for the provinces which is the Six Nations only heightens the importance of securing a home quarter-final.
The November interruption appears to have unsettled both Leinster and Munster this season as well. In light of their 37-11 thrashing by Ulster at Thomond Park two weeks ago, popular wisdom has it that Munster have only played well once or twice this season – winning 18-0 away to Leinster in round four of the Magners League and 24-16 away to Sale in their second pool game in mid-October. According to this school of thought, the subsequent gung-ho performance against the All Blacks can be overlooked as a one-off.
Memories are short. That win over Sale at Edgeley Park was Munster’s seventh win in succession. In that run they won away to Edinburgh, put 50 points on the Dragons (which no one else has done), played well in beating Cardiff at Musgrave Park, if less so Glasgow at Thomond’s unveiling, and, while they were hanging on by thread in both games against Clermont, emerging with a bonus point defeat and a win was no shabby effort against a team who would probably have been Heineken Cup semi-finalists in each of the last two seasons but for Munster, and are, in all probability, a better all-round team than France have been for the last year or so.
It’s perhaps also no coincidence that Leinster’s best performance of the season also came in round two of the Heineken Cup when they routed Wasps by six tries to one at the RDS.
For both provinces that weekend was the culmination of unbroken, two-month, seven-game schedules together.
Since then, the Irish squad were in camp for a month for the November internationals and again for three days after rounds three and four of the Heineken Cup in December. In effect, therefore, they’ve only had about four weeks together since mid-October, and over Christmas were obliged to rotate their squads somewhat.
Thus, they may never have the togetherness or be as well primed as they were in mid-October for the rest of the season.
Munster lacked intensity in the defeat at home to Ulster, but judging by the performances of Paul O’Connell, Donncha O’Callaghan and David Wallace et al, the pack has taken that lesson on board.
Ditto Leinster in defence, until the last play of their win at home to Cardiff.
Mentally both will be more sharply tuned at this weekend.
They better be, and they know it.
gthornley@irishtimes.com
