ON RUGBY:The signs were there in the way they put it up to Northampton away in last season's quarter-final and earned a bonus point at Clermont

THE HEINEKEN Cup doesn’t do dull, does it? It doesn’t do predictable either. Not alone did the weekend’s quarter-finals buck the trend of previous years, and a 77 per cent winning ratio for home teams at that juncture, with Sunday’s brace of away wins, but three of the four games went against the bookies’ favourites.

The one glorious exception was, of course, Leinster but Edinburgh, Ulster and Clermont were seven, six and three-point underdogs, and between them extinguished the interest of the four and two-time champions in Toulouse and Munster, as well as England’s last hope of reaching the Twickenham finale.

How the mighty have fallen? On the corresponding weekend three seasons ago, Munster destroyed a Lions- and Grand Slam-studded Ospreys side 43-9 with as clinical a performance as they’ve ever produced.

Then the reigning champions and, in a salutary warning to Leinster now, the top-ranked side in Europe seeking a third Cup in four years, Ian McGeechan and the Lions’ think tank sought to tap into the Munster zeitgeist by selecting eight of their number for the ensuing tour to South Africa.

Munster, historically put upon and especially by selectors, weren’t used to such recognition. Whereupon, of course, it all began to unravel.

Injuries to Tomás O’Leary and Jerry Flannery were compounded by Alan Quinlan’s suspension during the course of an altogether more damaging 25-6 win in the Croke Park semi-final.

It transpired that there was a more significant result that same Sunday three years ago, namely Leinster’s sleeves-rolled-up 6-5 win over Harlequins at the Stoop. Where the 41-35 win over Toulouse had been a thing of beauty and daring, the victory at the Stoop, withstanding an almost unrelenting assault and even blatant cheating at the end, ultimately put them in better fettle for a semi-final with Munster than had been the case three years before.

It was an un-Leinster like success, and all the better for that.

They still had to overcome their nemesis from Munster in the semi-finals, with a new-found steeliness and defensive resilience to their game which had been painstakingly generated by Michael Cheika and the players (not to mention the signing of Rocky Elsom and to a lesser extent the injury-prone CJ van der Linde), they actually put Munster to the sword at Croke Park.

Leinster were finally dining at European rugby’s top table and, in truth, have been the best side in Europe for the last four seasons, winning the trophy three seasons ago and last season, with only the luck of the draw in the shape of an away semi-final to Toulouse and Jonny Sexton’s injury denying them three successive finals.

Cheika had seemed like a hard act to follow, and along came a nice, pleasant, mild-mannered, honest assistant coach from Clermont by the name of Joe Schmidt.

He informed a squad of stellar names that he was going to make them pass the ball better, and said so publicly too. Ha! Now they are the team playing the most watchable rugby in Europe. And that includes international teams. And by some distance.

In this era of crash test dummy rugby, they even score tries off set-pieces without the opponents laying so much as a finger on them! They’re a joy to watch. True to their coach’s vow – both to the players and publicly – they have remarkably good basic handling skills, they play with a freedom that allows them to make mistakes and still try things. They are inventive, have variety, back each other to the hilt, and combine this with a voracious work ethic and effectiveness in defence. And they play out of Dublin, Ireland.

Two games prior to the 6-5 win over Harlequins, Leinster had lost successive pool matches away to Castres and Wasps, but since then have played 28 matches in the Heineken Cup and lost only three of them – at home to London Irish and away to Toulouse and Clermont.

All of which, of course, guarantees absolutely nothing henceforth, least of all when it comes to facing Clermont Auvergne in an “away” semi-final in Bordeaux. Remember how Munster were being lauded at the exact same point three years ago, and how Leinster lost in the semi-finals in Toulouse? If the rest of Europe could have combined to hand-pick a more difficult semi-final to dethrone the champions then it would have come up with this one.

Look at this game from a Clermont point of view. Having removed a monkey from their backs in winning the Bouclier de Brennus in their 10th final two years ago, they have the biggest squad in European rugby and coming from a town where rugby is the region’s flagship, have targeted a first European Cup in their centenary year. They also have the memory of that 29-28 quarter-final defeat at the RDS two seasons ago.

Brock James is never likely to forget his acute case of the yips that night, and was swiftly reminded of it by Mark Robson in his post-match interview. Imagine his and his team’s determination to atone for that defeat. All in all then, beating Clermont at a French ground in a semi-final would constitute Leinster’s best result in the last four seasons.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but in the same way that more of us should have seen Leinster’s chip-on-the-shoulder win over Munster in the semi-finals three seasons ago, ditto Ulster’s win over Munster in Thomond Park last Sunday. It had been coming.

The warning hadn’t been so much the ravaging of an injury-ravaged Leicester at Ravenhill, more the way they put it up to Northampton away in last season’s quarter-final and, even more so, emulating Munster (twice) and Leinster in earning a bonus point away to Clermont.

There’s no doubt a core of World Cup winners are less likely to be fazed by the two most imposing fortresses in European rugby, Stade Marcel Michelin and Thomond Park. It’s also ironic that the IRFU funded these imports, but it’s also worth repeating that Tom Court has become a better loosehead, if not tighthead; Dan Tuohy is unquestionably a better lock for playing alongside Johann Muller and now deserves to go to New Zealand; Paul Marshall, though we didn’t see him, has learned from Ruan Pienaar; no less than Rory Best, Stephen Ferris and Andrew Trimble, Paddy Wallace and Darren Cave are playing as well as ever and Craig Gilroy is a young winger who, as Brian McLaughlin ventured afterwards, could go very far.

He can only have learned from playing alongside Stefan Terblanche, and now Tommy Bowe is being lured home. Ulster are reborn and that can only be good for Irish rugby as well as themselves.

Not that the Heineken Cup correlates much with Test rugby. So it is that the Grand Slam-winning Welsh and runners-up England don’t provide one semi-finalist between them, the four coming from the countries which finished third, fourth and last!

Proof, were it needed, that the Heineken Cup bears increasingly less correlation with international rugby.

gthornley@irishtimes.com