IT'S SQUEAKY bum time in the season, as Alex Ferguson is wont to say. All the trophies are coming up for grabs, save for the recently completed EDF Cup; be it the Heineken Cup, the English Premiership, the French Championship, the Magners League, the Challenge Cup or whatever. And, if a country is fortunate enough to have an interest at this juncture, semi-final weekend in the Heineken Cup is as seismic as a Six Nations' weekend.
The match-ups are intriguingly and remarkably similar in make-up. The two English sides, London Irish and Saracens, are infrequent qualifiers for the premier European competition and benefited from reasonably favourable draws to reach the knock-out stages for the first time, where they each enjoyed home wins.
By contrast, the two away sides, Munster and Toulouse are two of Europe's established heavyweights. Munster are contesting their seventh semi-final in the last nine years, while Toulouse - the only three-time winners of the competition - are contesting a record eighth semi-final. Each showed their pedigree by coming through two brutes of a draw, whereupon Munster won their third away quarter-final out of five and Toulouse underlined how virtually unbeatable they are at home by dissecting Cardiff.
But, three weeks on, time has moved on a helluva lot already. Freshness of tired minds and bodies are as critical as form, past achievement, a winning culture, luck with decisions, injuries or the bounce of a ball, or whatever else contribute to trophy-winning squads. This is the time of the year when earlier rotation and careful husbandry of squads reap dividends. In some respects, bar the elite few clubs or provinces with real strength in depth, a team can be better off only going for one of the above trophies.
Leicester's achievement in winning the EDF Cup, the English Premiership and coming within one game of an historic treble in the Heineken Cup final last season now looks even more remarkable. Knocked out by Toulouse in the pool stages, beaten in the final of the EDF Cup, they are two points outside the top four play-offs in England in sixth place a year on.
The Tigers' achievement in winning back-to-back European Cup and Premiership doubles in 2000-01 and '01-02 also now looks even more incredible and one wonders if it will ever be repeated. It's also striking to note that on only two other occasions, when Toulouse augmented their French Championship success of 1995-96 by winning the inaugural Heineken Cup (only having to win four matches to do so) and when Wasps beat Toulouse in the epic 2004 decider at Twickenham a week before digging deep against Bath a week later at the same venue, has a team completed a domestic league and European Cup double.
It's a similar story in football, where Liverpool have benefited in Europe from being out of contention for the domestic league trophy - witness Rafa Benitez' tinkering for the middle/league leg of their recent triple whammy against Arsenal.
Likewise, their conquerors in last season's final, Milan, could afford to target the Champions League on their end-of-season run-in.
Perhaps helpfully therefore, London Irish and Saracens are off the pace in the top six scramble for the Premiership play-offs and so their only hope of silverware is this tournament. By contrast, of the current occupants of the top four - along with Sale and Leicester just outside the play-off places - only Gloucester even made it to the knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup.
Against that, neither London Irish nor Saracens have the squad strength of, say, Leicester, Wasps and Gloucester to mount credible, trophy-hunting challenges on all fronts, and each has been obliged to play more or less their strongest sides in the intervening weeks. Alan Gaffney made much of the fact that Wasps could play two completely different packs in their 49-12 and 29-19 wins over Worcester and Sale last Saturday week and Tuesday. Sure enough, in-form Wasps were perhaps the worst team Saracens could have run into last Saturday at Vicarage Road, when Ian McGeechan's team built up a 40-12 lead by the 46th minute to register their eighth successive win.
However, as Saracens' four second-half tries underlined, they have a core spirit and resilience. That is what helped them rebound from a 30-3 EDF semi-final mauling by the Ospreys to beat them 19-10 two weeks later in the Heineken Cup semi-finals.
The latter is a truer indication of what Munster will face next Sunday for, at squeaky bum time, it's also so difficult emotionally, mentally and physically to keep peaking every weekend. Munster discovered this a week after hitting the heights away to Gloucester when away to Leinster, as Leinster did in turn when travelling to Edinburgh.
Nevertheless, last Saturday at home to the Ospreys in the Magners League, the Brains Trust could rest all bar two or three of their starting line-up, while affording Marcus Horan and David Wallace useful second-half cameos, and still earn a gritty, morale-boosting win. They should travel to the Ricoh Arena in reasonably good fettle.
Guy Noves was afforded no such luxuries. As the fates would have it, Toulouse were at home to Clermont Auvergne in a French Championship summit meeting last Saturday, built up to be the match of the domestic season thus far. Although the top two are well clear of the rest in the French Championship, Toulouse were obliged to put out their best team in front of a full house in Le Stadium for the televised clash, and paid for it accordingly. Still very much in the game in the third quarter when a score down and attacking, despite Jean-Baptiste Ellisalde having a horror day with his place-kicking, Vincent Clerc attempted to step off his left foot inside Aurelien Rougerie. His knee buckled horribly, French cameras ghoulishly showing the incident from a host of angles in slow motion repeatedly. To compound matters, Rougerie kicked on to score off the turnover from his own half and the game was effectively over.
Clerc, who has been performing virtually non-stop as the best winger in France since the outset of the World Cup, was obliged to have an operation on his damaged ligaments yesterday and is out for six months, thereby compounding long-term injuries to Clement Poitrenaud as well as the absence of Florian Fritz and Maleli Kunavore. Also, Thierry Dusautoir was badly dazed and is out of next Saturday's semi-final against London Irish in Twickenham, while there is also a doubt about influential number eight Shaun Sowerby.
London Irish have a style of play - brilliant defensive line-out, blitz defence - which historically troubles Toulouse, witness four close meetings and one victory over the French aristocrats in previous campaigns. The odds on a turn-up next Saturday have shortened and also, perhaps, the others' odds of going all the way - including Munster
