Irish patients show signs of recovery

Forget all this gloom and doom then, let's have some bloom and boom? In what may well have been a revealing barometer of the shifting climate in European club/provincial rugby, the opening salvos of the Heineken Cup did not show the Irish to be terminally ill. They may even be recuperating.

Leinster and Munster were more than competitive against Toulouse and Harlequins. This should not be that surprising. It underlined the feeling beforehand that for all the pessimism induced by a forgettable interprovincial series, the arrival of a more meaningful competition with bigger crowds and against better and less familiar opposition would bring about a significant improvement. And at least the interpros had them match-tuned and helped to iron out team selection.

At the very least it was encouraging for the Irish participants. Not so, by comparison, for some of the others, most notably the Welsh and Scots. Watching the two Sky matches on Sunday, and casting a glance through yesterday's results and reports, the bottom line would appear to be that money talks.

With no Anglo-French collisions, those two countries each had unblemished records, registering four wins apiece. The only other winners were Welsh, Llanelli, and if the supposed pick of the Scots, Caledonia, could not beat one of the weaker Welsh participants at home to improve on their collectively dismal record of one win in 12 matches last season, then it really does not bode well for them.

Nor can the Welsh take too much heart from the opening round of matches. In the previous two seasons, Welsh clubs had experienced only one defeat on home soil, and that was in the last minute of extra time in the 1996 decider when Toulouse edged out Cardiff with a late Christophe Deylaud penalty.

Of their dozen group games, quarterfinals and semi-finals at home, the Welsh won them all. Yet, ominously for them, that apparent invincibility on home soil was psychologically shredded on Sunday by the victories of Bath and Wasps away to Pontypridd and Swansea, respectively.

The Welsh still can't compete on an equal footing with the English clubs. Amid shades of a penurious League of Ireland club, witness Llanelli's life-saving sale of Stradey Park to the Welsh RU? Unfortunately for Munster, the one Welsh club with a wealthy benefactor and thus the exception to this rule are their opponents' next Saturday, Cardiff.

The rampaging bursts of that Polish/French phenomenon Gregory Kacala and the ability of the Cardiff pack to take on Bourgoin on their home soil points to another testing away afternoon for Munster. Still, they can extract plenty of encouragement from their efforts against Harlequins.

After all, they retained only two of the side that finished their European campaign last season. The selectors' loyalty having been extended to the full in the forlorn hope that some key players would rediscover their best form, Munster clearly found a better balance in selection just in the nick of time.

Having toiled to convert forward superiority into even a try-scoring chance over their two previous interpro outings, Munster engineered their first competitive try of the season, not just for one winger, but for both.

With fitness levels better than ever, as evidenced by Leinster's durable 80-minute display against Toulouse, there's no reason for believing that the Irish sides will fall into the classical Irish trap of peaking one week and falling away the next.

Leinster's performance was far from perfect. Some missed tackles, unimaginative decision-making and a recurring penchant for drifting across the pitch and not bringing Denis Hickie into the game were all in evidence.

Yet no one, French and English included, are perfect this early in the season. Leicester's laboured 26-10 win at home to Milan on Sunday, coupled with Treviso's one-point defeat to Pau, suggests that the Italians' policy of drafting in players from other clubs purely for this competition (in effect making them provincial sides as well) will make them far more competitive.

However, it didn't portray Leicester in too favourable a light after just one competitive outing before Sunday. Bob Dwyer, the Leicester coach, was no doubt mindful of the harrowing evening Leinster gave them last year when commenting: "We were disappointing in the extreme. Never mind Toulouse, on today's display we haven't got a hope in hell of winning in Dublin against Leinster on Friday. We aren't doing the simple things well, and collectively we were all over the place."

Furthermore, Leinster's deliberate policy of playing at Donnybrook this season probably adds six to 10 points to their chances.

The Leinster Branch's promotion of the game was first-class and Friday's early evening kick-off for the visit of Leicester encourages their hope that they can emulate last Saturday's attendance of 5,000.

All in all, you can't beat exposure like this to the northern hemisphere's equivalent of the Super 12. Denis Hickie, for example, was a little hard on himself afterwards for allowing Michel Marfaing to step inside him for the first Toulouse try, but he had been left effectively with two men to mark. Nor is he tested in such a manner at AIL or interpro level.

It also exposed players like Trevor Brennan, Reggie Corrigan and Declan O'Brien to a level of rugby they've never experienced before, and they came through it well. All were playing second division AIL rugby last season.

Of the three newcomers to the Leinster fold, only Brennan had even played in a `friendly' before this season. A one-man show for Bective last season, his game has evolved superbly with Leinster. What made his man-of-the-match performance even more astonishing was that the 24-year-old is a part-timer playing alongside several full-timers and up against a fully professional team.

Given Henry Hurley's unfortunate contractual difficulties, a full-time contract has now become available to the Leinster management. They'll surely award it immediately to Brennan. No squad-mate would begrudge him that and it would send out all the right signals. It's all the more pressing given he is about to be placed in the shop window again on Friday.

Perhaps, ultimately, no Irish side will progress to the knockout stages yet. Despite the tug of war prompted by Leinster's semifinal appearance two years ago, this season's Heineken Cup semi-finals on the weekend of December 20th clash with the Italy-Ireland international. Clearly, pessimism wasn't confined to most sections of the media.