Cup of hope replaces the cup of gloom

Rugby/ European Cup:All in all, a restorative if far from perfect weekend for Irish rugby.

The post-World Cup gloom had only deepened over Ravenhill but Leinster and Munster each rediscovered their grit and in terms of performance put that inexplicable and inexcusable World Cup effort into some sort of shade as well as context.

Nobody wins the Heineken European Cup in the opening two weekends but teams do lose it and whereas Ulster's goose looks well and truly roasted, at least Leinster and Munster - drawn in the two toughest groups, where it's imperative you win your home matches - move on to round two alive.

Leinster travel to Toulouse next Sunday joint top of Pool Six after Saturday's gritty if relatively clear-cut win over Leicester, while Munster entertain Clermont Auvergne the same day with a valuable bonus point from their 24-23 defeat to Wasps in Coventry on Saturday evening.

Although there was so much to admire in their performance, the nagging suspicion remains that by their extraordinary standards Munster missed a real chance to snatch an away win. In the Group of Death by a Thousand Cuts, potentially that is liable to be like gold-dust.

The flip side of that coin is that no one can afford to slip up at home and so the pressure is on to win at Thomond Park next week.

The Munster mystique having been removed somewhat by Leicester in January, it won't be a floodlit, Saturday evening kick-off either, more an unfamiliar 1pm Sunday start with a reduced 12,000 capacity in a ground being rebuilt.

An estimated 12,000 or more ultimately made their way to the Ricoh Arena on Saturday amid the official attendance of 21,506, a remarkable tribute to the Red Army's loyalty, as well as their well-placed belief in their European Cup heroes.

However, also bearing in mind that no team has recovered from losing the opening two matches to reach the knock-out stages, Munster - players and fans alike - are going to have to generate something special next Sunday. That much was abundantly underlined by the quality of Clermont's stunning 48-21, seven-tries-to-three win over Llanelli yesterday, which left them atop Pool Five.

Bristling with power up front, potent pace, depth and width (Aurelien Rougerie scored a hat-trick) and the mighty boot of Brock James, last season's form team in France unveiled World Cup-winning captain John Smit for his debut as a second-half replacement for Mario Ledesma.

"This needs to be our base level now," said Declan Kidney of Munster opening display. "Clermont present a totally different type of challenge, in the way that they play and the way that they come at you. The way that we attack them, we'll have to vary that too, because of the way they defend. So it's a completely different game of chess. As I said before, it's going to take six cup-final performances to be there or thereabouts."

Pending a diagnosis on John Hayes's "very sore neck" today, Kidney commented: "The positives were the things that sometimes we take for granted. The absolute honesty and work-rate of the players is phenomenal.

"Once you have that then you're always 80 or 90 per cent of the way there, and then it comes to the finer little things, especially when you're playing in a pool with teams of this level. It's strange, because once you're this close it makes the disappointment more acute."

There remained, too, a niggling belief Munster came out the wrong end of two critical decisions by Malcolm Changleng. The Scottish referee made many sharp calls in what was never likely to be an easy game to referee between two such streetwise "cup" teams. But the most critical by far were the decisions not to sinbin Fraser Waters for holding on to Brian Carney yards from the Wasps try-line in the 44th minute with Munster leading 20-13 and the yellow-carding of Marcus Horan in the 56th minute for "coming in from the side" when the ball had clearly if briefly emerged from a Wasps ruck 30 metres out.

Regarding the Waters-Carney incident, Kidney commented, "It's clear to see. There's enough television and enough people have seen it for me to go on and rant and rave about it. I don't think it would serve any purpose. Everybody saw what happened. It's there for everybody to see and we lost the game by a point."

Just to suggest, not for the first time, that two opposing coaches were watching different incidents, rather laughably Ian McGeechan contended, "If you look at the incident we feel it should have been a penalty to us. Fraser Waters was trying to get off the ground." Quite how a clear case of "a professional foul" was not deemed worthy of a yellow card, whereas Horan's offence did merit one was baffling. In mitigation of Horan, David Wallace had shouted "Ball out", which it was, while Changleng countered, "No it isn't." Horan might have been best advised to wait for the Scottish referee's approval, though that's a damned sight easier to say from the press box.

After Toulouse's edgy 19-15 away to Edinburgh, Leinster travel with renewed enthusiasm after keeping the Tigers at bay with a good gameplan, executed calmly with consummate control. Not alone have Leinster no injuries arising from an ultra-physical encounter, coach Michael Cheika expects tighthead Stephen Knoop to be fit again for a first meeting since their 41-35 quarter-final win in Toulouse two seasons ago.

"It gives us some belief in ourselves," Cheika said yesterday in light of Saturday's 22-9 win, "but it's like a final every week. It's about how we bring our intensity. It's going to be tough away. They're going to bring memories from the last game down there, but we'll develop a plan tomorrow; we've got some things we want to do and we've got another day's recovery, which is good. It's going to be a battle and another tough ask."