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Gerry Thornley: Results can often defy logic in the Champions Cup

Up-and-down form guides make forecasting this weekend’s eight ties fiendishly difficult

La Rochelle's Ronan O'Gara looks to pull one out of the bag once more. Photograph: Xavier Leoty/AFP via Getty

Gerry Thornley's face
Gerry Thornley
Fri Apr 5 2024 - 19:35

This is not a lament. Well, okay then, maybe a little one. From 1999-2000, for 21 years the Champions Cup was comprised of pools of four, and one of the competition’s defining features was the home and away format. This was particularly true of the traditional December back-to-back rounds.

Almost half the time, the results defied logic. There was the classic case of the old Ravenhill in raptures as Ulster eviscerated the Leicester Tigers by 33-0 in December 2003, less than two months after Martin Johnson had led England to World Cup triumph.

A week later, Welford Road was beside itself in gleeful vengeance as Johnson crowned a 49-7 win with a rampaging 40-metre run-in – his second and last Heineken Cup try. That equates to a 75-point turnaround. In a week. Go figure.

Home advantage was clearly a factor then, but it isn’t always the case. As Leinster prepared this week to host Leicester in the Aviva tomorrow night, most likely Leo Cullen has referenced the festive back-to-back games of 2013.

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Leinster produced their best performance of the season in Franklin’s Gardens when tries by Jamie Heaslip, Eoin Reddan and Brian O’Driscoll complemented a hat-trick by Luke Fitzgerald in a 40-7 win. Precisely seven days later, in front of a 47,000-plus crowd at the Aviva, Northampton won 18-9. The defeat condemned Leinster to a quarter-final away to reigning champions Toulon, which they lost.

There are countless other examples of this, and most likely there are two key factors at work, namely revenge in one corner and complacency, even subconscious, in the other.

Revenge, with the added ingredient of wounded pride, is always a powerful spur in sport and on the rare occasions when it is served up within a week, the motivational juices are all the fresher.

Furthermore, no matter how much coaches may forewarn their players, or how much they say it or think it, a team which has comfortably beaten specific opponents might struggle to convince themselves they are not superior just a week later. If nothing else, that fear of defeat may have been diluted, if not eroded. And that’s all it takes.

Two seasons ago, the Round of 16 was a back-to-back, two-legged affair. In half the ties the same team won both legs and eased to the finishing line. But victories were traded in the other four, with Munster and Toulouse overturning first leg deficits against Exeter and Ulster to advance to the quarter-finals, while Harlequins and Bristol nearly did so.

Last season, when the Round of 16 was cut back to one leg, the home advanced in every tie. But none of the eight ties were a reprise of pool meetings, whereas this season five of the Round of 16 ties are repeats from the group stages. There appears to have been a general reaction of disappointment to this, but now that the ties are upon us, less so. If anything, repeats add to the intrigue.

Results among some clubs have fluctuated dramatically, not least in the Premiership, where the absence of relegation has assuredly contributed to some carefree high scoring. This has even prompted some claims, on TNT Sports of all places, that it’s a shame the Champions Cup is interrupting the Premiership. Wept!

But both history and this season’s up-and-down form guides all makes forecasting this weekend’s eight ties, and specifically the rematches, fiendishly difficult.

To begin with the Saturday 12.30pm game, in the high veldt against a Lyon team that are struggling domestically and overachieved in Pool A, the Bulls should be good value to avenge their 29-28 defeat in France last December. Accordingly, Paddy Power makes the Bulls 20-point favourites and you wouldn’t back against Jake White’s side.

Next is the intriguing rematch between the Stormers and La Rochelle in Cape Town at 3pm. The reigning back-to-back champions have managed only two away wins this season, but they led that pool game in the DHL Stadium by 20-9 and had a couple of tries disallowed before Mannie Libbok’s touchline conversion with the last kick of the game snatched a 21-20 win for the Stormers.

Ronan O’Gara’s team are big-game hunters, have plotted this week before and, interestingly, they are three-point favourites. You wouldn’t back against them either.

Perhaps the match that could be utterly unrecognisable from the pool stages is between high-flying Bordeaux Bègles and Saracens at a vibrant Stade Chaban-Delmas at 5.30pm. When they met in January at the same venue, everything went for the star-studded French side as they scored nine tries in what was a record 55-15 defeat for Saracens.

This seemed to signal the end is nigh for the fallen English giants, but two weeks ago they rose to the occasion in front of 80,000 at Twickenham by filleting Harlequins (admittedly a wildly fluctuating team from game to game and within games) by 52-7. Allowances can perhaps be made for losing six nights later by 41-30 in Northampton.

The bookies have hedged their bets a little, making Bordeaux Bègles eight-point favourites. But, while more competitive this time, the loss of the departing Owen Farrell seriously dents Saracens’ hopes of turning around a 40-point battering.

The winners of the Stormers-La Rochelle tie will await the winners of the Leinster-Leicester game at 8pm, and while this looks like another probable repeat (Cullen’s men are 19-point favourites) like Northampton in 2013 the Tigers have had their tails tugged and have nothing to lose.

Northampton having remained the form side in England, accordingly they are five-point favourites at home to Munster in the Sunday 12.30pm game, and if anything, that is the least the Saints should be after their 26-23 win in the January rain at Thomond Park with 14 players for more than half the game.

But there are other factors at work. This is, after all, the Champions Cup, and this is Munster. They’ve defied the odds more than most.