Get ready for French warfare

RUGBY: The Blue Brigade having been launched in Toulouse for a long-awaited reunion with Trevor Brennan, the De Danu pub will be hopping all weekend.

Meantime, the Red Army will invade Lansdowne Road and possibly shake the old ground from its crumbling rafters even more than they did in that unforgettable semi-final two seasons ago against Wasps.

Ah yes, even for the couch potatoes, if this doesn't tickle our fancies, nothing will. The Leicester-Bath Battle of Britain constituting a mere appetiser, come 4.0 French time and 3.0 Irish, Leinster step into the Toulouse lair that is, quite simply, Le Stadium. A sea of red and black, rocking up and down to the rhythmic chanting of "Toulou-sain, Toulou-sain", there might even be the odd strains of Molly Molone, for Leinster's supporters have travelled in record numbers.

They've had trouble getting there, mind. Hundreds were apparently stranded in Britain because of a French air strike and were spending up to 400 on alternative one-way flights to Toulouse. Many more were delayed by up to three hours amid queues galore in Dublin airport.

Student demonstrations are scheduled in Toulouse today in protest over the proposed new right-wing employment contracts. This weekend's odyssey could be one to tell the grandchildren about.

But quite simply, more than ever before, they believe that if any team can down the French aristocrats, it's this Leinster outfit. Modern-day rugby matches rarely pit two such daring, running outhalves as Felipe Contepomi and the mercurial, but sometimes flaky Frederic Michalak, nor a midfield contest pitting the likes of Leinster's twinkle-toed twosome of Brian O'Driscoll and Gordon D'Arcy against the power and creativity of Florian Fritz and Yannick Jauzion. It could be some match.

Most likely, the Red Army won't take too much interest in advance of their 5.30 kick-off at Lansdowne Road. They didn't snap up 4,500 in an estimated seven minutes about three weeks ago, or about 45,000 or so (including quite a number of Perpignan's allocation) in total, just to watch Leinster on a big screen somewhere. Not when they could be watching Munster's warm-up and, as is an essential part of their custom, roar them back into the bowels of the Lansdowne Road west stand in recreating Thomond Park.

Struck by the thousands bedecked in red and already in situ well before the semi-final kick-off two years ago, the Wasps captain Lawrence Dallaglio emerged from the steps and was overhead to remark by a nearby steward: "Holy f***."

On days like this, the Heineken European Cup shines every bit as brightly as the Six Nations in the professional era. There's hardly been one dud year. It has survived all manner of off-the-pitch rifts, posturing, neglect and even boycotting by the English and a couple of Welsh clubs. It has been an enduring tribute to the men whose vision generated the competition, to the organisers and most of all to the essence of European rugby.

Yet this week the French and English clubs have been flexing their pecs again in an attempt to draw some battle lines in the sand in the renegotiations over the Paris Accord, which covers the competition's governance and format, with Serge Blanco leading the way. And when Smokin' Serge talks, the audience listens.

The French clubs, and by extension their English counterparts, want to wrest control of the tournament away from the six founding unions, and want a much greater slice of the financial cake. The French and English are funding the Celts, Blanco claims, and besides they can do without the European Cup.

It will be interesting to see how uninterested Blanco will be when his own beloved Biarritz host Sale in San Sebastien tomorrow in the concluding quarter-final or if, unlike Leicester last year, Perpignan turn down their €500,000 pay-out from today's Lansdowne Road gate receipts.

With 150,000 supporters paying through the turnstiles, this weekend's quarter-finals will generate over 4 million in gate receipts, compared to 2.6 million last year, when there were 10,000 more paying spectators.

Toulouse, way ahead of the French posse, have effectively built the best club-owned facilities in Europe on the back of three successive home quarter-finals - the single most lucrative fixture any club in Europe can generate in any given season.

So the French and English clubs don't need the largesse generated by Leinster, who have been one of the most visionary when it first came to moving quarter-finals to larger stadiums. They don't need Munster and their Red Army, who travel and spend money in pursuit of their holy grail like no other team in Europe.

Indeed, at this business end of the tournament, no country has stood up to an Anglo-French duopoly on the pitch more than the Irish provinces - Ulster single-handedly saving the tournament in 1999 when England boycotted it. In the week that was in it, there would be no better time for Leinster and Munster to soften Serge's cough by overcoming Toulouse and Perpignan and thereby procure an all-Irish semi-final.

Admittedly, the odds are against it. The momentum which carried Munster and Leinster into that memorable double whammy over Sale and Bath in January has largely been lost. Perpignan are an altogether more settled outfit and the star-studded Stade Toulousain aristocrats - three-time winners, defending champions and seeking a fourth final in a row - are well-nigh unbeatable in their own city, where they've won 19 European Cup ties in a row and all four of their previous home quarter-finals.

Undaunted, Michael Cheika wants his team to trust their instincts and go with the flow.

"Something we're really underlining is taking the 'what ifs' out of the equation. We know we can do it and we're focusing on what we are capable of doing, and of peaking our performance on the day, both physically and skillwise. The hype will be there in the build-up to the game but we want to keep that hype channelled."

"It's day like this that you get into it for, really," ventured Declan Kidney succinctly yesterday, albeit through a heavy sinus condition. "Plenty of nerves, but that's part of the adrenaline that flows going into matches like this."

It'll flow like honey today.