No quarter asked as Europe's finest face off

ON RUGBY:The Heineken Cup last eight has the Magners League top three, three of the English Premiership's top four and the French champions. The cream has risen, writes GERRY THORNLEY

OUTSIDE OF the Six Nations, and perhaps even more so than some of the more prosaic rounds of matches in that tournament, two of the stand-out weekends of the European season are the last round of pool matches in the Heineken Cup and the quarter-finals. These are the weekends when the wheat is sorted out from the chaff.At times, quarter-final weekend has come a little too hard on the heels of the Six Nations finale – usually a fortnight. This season, thankfully, there has been an extra week’s breathing space with which to ready ourselves, and last Saturday’s Thomond Park sell-out for the latest domestic squabble set things up nicely. Well, for Munster anyhow.

Tony McGahan’s men entertain the Ospreys in the first of Easter Sunday’s double-header – at the not especially spectator-friendly time of 1pm – atop the Magners League with a seven-point gap and, save for Rua Tipoki and Frankie Sheahan, with a squad brimful of health and confidence. They’d like Tipoki’s football savvy and competitiveness for a match such as this, for despite the undoubted brilliance of Lifeimi Mafi and Keith Earls, it is a relatively callow midfield.

But otherwise, with seven successive wins and the confidence generated from being the bulk supplier to the Grand Slam, they could hardly be in a better place. Facing into Munster’s 100th game in this competition (Toulouse reached the milestone last time out in round six), McGahan’s only real selectorial issues will be whether to restore Denis Leamy to the backrow and to choose between Ian Dowling and Barry Murphy on the wing, and tighten up their scrummaging and cleaning out at the breakdown.

What’s that they say about the cream always rising to the top? The last eight features the top three in the Magners League, three of the tour four in the English Premiership and the French league leaders and champions, and they have 52 quarter-final appearances between them over the last dozen years. Akin to the Champions League, it would seem to indicate a deep-rooted tradition of success and proven ability in the Heineken Cup. Four clubs have won the last eight runnings of the Cup – Munster, Toulouse, Leicester and Wasps.

With the latter out of the frame and seriously faltering, it would be no surprise if the other three heavyweight contenders all reached the last four. Cardiff have home advantage against Toulouse, unlike last year’s quarter-final meeting, but the core of this Toulouse team have plenty of experience of playing at the Millennium Stadium, some of it good too.

Supposedly under-strength on Saturday away to fifth-placed Brive – the form side in France with 10 wins and a draw from their previous dozen matches – Guy Noves’ team retained their leadership of the Top 14 with a third successive win, by 42-10.

Their record in the quarter-finals is also fairly handy, having won seven of their previous nine ties in the last eight.

Leicester have won five of eight previous quarter-finals, although they did lose at this stage to Bath three season ago – albeit at the Walkers Stadium. With six wins from their last seven, like Toulouse and Munster they’re beginning to motor nicely at the business end of the season.

A word of warning to Munster, however. They may have more experience of quarter-finals than anyone else, with seven wins from their previous 10 appearances including four from four at home, while the Ospreys are in relatively uncharted waters but that does not mean they can take this quarter-final for granted.

Twelve months ago Ospreys reached the quarter-finals for the first time – Swansea having also done so once in 2001 when beaten 41-10 at Leicester – and also in the immediate aftermath of backboning Wales’ Grand Slam, only to collapse under the weight of their own expectations and confidence away to Saracens. Remember James Hook showboating by trying to catch a ball behind his back? Admittedly, it is unlikely any Munster side would ever be afflicted by such over-confidence or star syndrome. That said, the Ospreys are sure to have learned from the experience and the events of last Saturday week in Cardiff, plus their ensuing defeat in the EDF Cup semi-finals at Gloucester leaves them with only the Heineken Cup as a chance of silverware.

Which leaves Easter Sunday’s second quarter-final. At the time of the draw, Harlequins were considered, relatively speaking, to be about the best Leinster could have hoped for after that silly defeat in Castres effectively consigned them to a last-eight tie on the road.

A few things have happened since then to change that landscape. For starters, Harlequins decided not to move the game to Twickenham, where they lured 50,000 spectators for a Premiership match earlier this season. At a stroke, given the incentive of a 60 per cent split of the gate for moving to a bigger venue, they have assuredly denied themselves a one-off bonus of €551,884, so please, henceforth, spare us the the arrogant and self-serving claims of the English Premiership power-brokers that they could better maximise the competition’s commercial potential than the ERC or anyone else.

That said, it perhaps does reduce Leinster’s chances of beating one of the form sides in the Premiership. Dean Richards’ team, under the defensive guidance of Tony Diprose, are the hardest team to break down in England and having put 60 points on Worcester last Wednesday, recorded the kind of sleeves-rolled up win at Bath on Saturday which would have been deemed beyond them pre-Richards. That made it nine wins from their last 10.

Leinster, in contrast to Munster, have issues, not the least the well-being of Bernard Jackman and CJ van der Linde (who both look very doubtful) and Brian O’Driscoll and Luke Fitzgerald, who look likelier to return. That would strengthen their outside defence and give them more potency, provided they play with the kind of width and accuracy they only really showed in the last quarter on Saturday. Not to mention the kind of psychological fillip O’Driscoll’s return would bring.

Still, they haven’t become a bad side overnight. Felipe Contepomi will assuredly retain the number 10 jersey and goalkicking duties, and is quite liable to have a stormer. They will need to take their chances but they’re well capable of doing so.

To further underline the task of the challenge facing them, exactly 75 per cent, or three out of four, of all previous quarter-finals, have been won by the home team. However it pans out, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see the only two teams with over a century of Heineken Cup matches under their belts reprising last year’s final.