Bigger and getting better

OVERVIEW: It's back, and looking better than ever. The World Cup will always be global, the Six Nations will always be grander, but a bit like Munster themselves, the Heineken European Cup just has that X factor.

It's what makes it probably the best rugby tournament around. From Belfast to Treviso, we know it reaches parts of the rugby community the others don't, but just when it seemed it couldn't surpass itself, along came last season's semi-final between Wasps and Munster. In scale, the sense of occasion, it was ridiculously good.

Robert Howley recently commented he felt honoured to have played in the best club match of all time. It helps, of course, when you win. Munster players mightn't share the Wasps and Welsh sniper's memories.

Now the tournament is in its 10th year, the cast isn't as volatile as it was, but even the repeats stand up to repeated viewing. Take Munster-Gloucester, or Leicester-Munster, Leicester-Stade, to name but three. Allowing for the Ospreys, who have since swallowed up the then fourth-pool member Bridgend, curiously Pool Four comprises the same group as three years ago, with Munster, Castres and Harlequins completing the line-up.

Anything involving Munster, Thomond Park, the Red Army, their Magnificent Obsession, has usually stirred the soul. The Miracle Match, the Twickenham downpour that helped Northampton beat them, the rockin' semi-final in Toulouse, the Hand of (Neil) Back. Not that they have exclusive rights on heartbreak. Tim Stimpson's last-minute long-ranger via bar and post to beat Llanelli, Clement Poitrenaud's gaffe, not to mention the Battle of Brive and other cross-cultural collisions.

It's the variety and quaintness of the cup as well. From the bearpits of Thomond Park and Kingsholm to the less rarefied atmosphere of Calvisano, where one recalls being one of six hacks among 250 well-heeled Italians for a Milan-Leinster match. An alien could have spotted the six non-locals (sartorial inelegance had something to do with it), though by the end, when Milan won, it had become frenzied.

The ERC's desire for expansion, and bigger crowds in bigger stadiums to underline the competition's growth, is understandable. But the cup's parochialism, the confines of some of its grounds, is also what sets it apart, what makes tickets like gold-dust.

Take Leinster moving from Donnybrook to Lansdowne Road, where Bath are due next Saturday. It will accommodate vastly more spectators, which is positive, but the Bath coach John Connolly may have been slightly mischievous - and also hit a nerve - when admitting: "Mate, I'd like to be playing at Donnybrook. There's a great atmosphere there. I've always liked it."

Can Lansdowne become a similar furnace?

All told, there are six former winners in this year's cast, along with four runners-up and five who have reached semi-finals. All of them, along with the upwardly-mobile Welsh regional outfits, the Ospreys and the Dragons, are entitled to be called contenders.

The English and the French may be luxuriating in what they perceive as vastly stronger and superior domestic leagues. But fools rush in and all that. Even disregarding the Lions tour, this season is going to be another long, demanding treadmill (will it ever be any other way?).

The English and French clubs may be farther down the track and playing to a higher intensity. Crowds may be up in an expanded French Championship, and ditto the Zurich Premiership, but so too is the injury toll, by 20 per cent in France against the same point last season. In England, Paul Grayson reckons the intensity of a Premiership game is already up 20 per cent.

"We even tossed up whether we'd rotate our squad in the Heineken Cup, to give them a rest. We've got quite a few players who are battered and sore," says Connolly.

"For most of the English teams unfortunately it's not about winning Europe," he adds. "The first objective is not to get relegated, the second thing is to finish in the top six and then try and get into Europe, and then you've got to worry about winning it. I mean, Ireland have a huge advantage, where their focus is the Heineken Cup and Test matches." Hmm.

Even so, 50 to 1 about them as distinct from 7 to 1 against Leinster? Wasps' odds of 10 to 1 are largely to do with their grouping against Biarritz and Leicester. They've been missing up to eight frontliners, though they might be better off for that, for as shown last season they are the most astute at giving their players rest, as well as supremely fit. Furthermore, they're starting to come back in time for tomorrow's crunch match at home to Biarritz.

"We're quite similarly placed in a strange way. This time last year we had players away at the World Cup and came up against Perpignan at home in our first match," says Gatland.

So what do you need to win the European Cup? "You need strength in depth in your squad, you need a bit of luck in terms of your draw, and if you get a home quarter-final, you've got a chance," reckons Gatland.

Toulouse again fit the bill, though a gun to the head would probably say Wasps. Come the fifth and sixth rounds of the pool stages in January, Munster and Leinster could be in better health than many of their Euro rivals. Their problem might be getting there, and by extension to the knockout stages, with sufficient points to their names.

If they do then maybe, just maybe, you-know-who will find their Holy Grail.