ON RUGBY:HATS OFF to the ERC once more. Whereas 70 per cent of the games in the English Premiership, with all their resources and under-soil heating, bit the dust over the weekend, by this evening, somehow, all dozen Heineken Cup ties will have been included; the ERC and various airport authorities having moved heaven and earth to get all of Glasgow's playing equipment to their hotel in Toulouse by 9am.
Crucially, the integrity of the tournament has been maintained, with no match, as things stand, set to be deferred beyond rounds five and six in this arctic winter. It still seems more fiendishly difficult than ever to pick the eight quarter-finalists at this juncture, but Leinster are both best placed of the Irish trio going into the final two rounds, and look best equipped to ultimately win the trophy after two outstanding performances in a row against Clermont.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Leinster did, after all, reach the semi-finals last season, only to be without Jonathan Sexton when also having the distinct misfortune to be drawn away in the semi-finals. You need a bit of luck in these things too, and as an aside it was interesting to contrast the way Sexton hurriedly had a plate inserted in his jaw the day after last season’s quarter-final in a failed attempt to have him fit for the semi-final three weeks later whereas without an operation and returning to the care of his specialist, Brian O’Driscoll was able to play again 20 days after suffering a cracked jaw against Argentina.
To have earned a bonus point in Clermont without three of their four Lions and with the other, Jamie Heaslip, operating on one ankle until giving way at the half-time mark was phenomenal. They have more strength in depth than perhaps even they released.
Nevertheless, Ireland will clearly be drawing more heavily on Leinster during the Six Nations than the other provinces combined – perhaps more so than ever given the increased credentials of Mike Ross, Leo Cullen and Seán O’Brien. After all, Ross and Cullen weren’t involved at all in the November Tests, which looks even more curious now, particularly in the case of Ross.
The point bears repeating that had the Cork prop been playing with Munster on Saturday they probably would have beaten the Ospreys, given how many points it cost them and how they again outscored the Welsh region by two tries to one and were in the game until the end.
Munster are barely clinging on, and in some respects should be grateful they are. If it is true Romain Poite informed Alun-Wyn Jones the Ospreys could not opt for a scrum with the 80 minutes up, the French referee was wrong to do so, and that was Munster’s luckiest reprieve of all.
That said, Mike Phillips’ try should never have been allowed given the way Barry Davies blocked Ronan O’Gara.
Now though, comes the trickiest part of all. Such are their almost unequalled resources, Toulon could afford to make nine changes from their first win over London Irish in completing the double with a bonus point last Saturday. The most obvious ones were Felipe Contepomi coming in for Jonny Wilkinson, and George Smith at wing forward, but they also changed their entire tight five.
In the first win, Toulon had a frontrow of Tongan-born Saimone Taumoepeau, who has been capped three times by the All Blacks, French hooker Sebastien Bruno and renowned All Blacks tighthead Carl Hayman, the one overseas-based player Grahan Henry admits would still walk into the All Blacks squad.
They then brought on Benjamin Basteres, their 26-year-old home-grown Corsican, Mickael Ivaldi, last season’s French under-20s hooker, and Mehdi Merabet, the 25-year-old former French under-20 prop.
Last Saturday, in the return match at the Stade Felix-Mayol, they went with the experienced 34-year-old Laurent Emmanuelli, Ivaldi and Georgian tighthead Davit Kubriashvili, later refreshing the entire frontrow before the hour mark with Taumoepeau, 21-year-old hooker Jean-Charles Orioli and Merabet.
The DVD of the Ospreys’ destruction of the Munster scrum last Saturday will merely have re-enforced the vivid impression left on the watching French rugby public of last season’s semi-final, when Biarritz beat Munster 18-7 with ne’er a hint of a try, thanks in large part to damage the Basques’ scrum wreaked that day.
So it’s not hard to imagine Philippe Saint-André and his forwards coach Aubin Hueber will already be pencilling in their most destructive scrummaging unit for the Munster game, with their most potent re-enforcements on the bench for the final quarter assault.
The Munster scrum coach Paul McCarthy can only go back to the drawing board and the training ground, while also, perhaps, getting inside Tony Buckley’s head. The options here are not plentiful, for sadly things did not improve perceptibly when John Hayes was introduced, and Peter Borlase, who is assuredly better than he looked against Australia, having only landed in Ireland the previous week, is a longer-term option, a so-called “special project”.
However, Munster and McCarthy will hope that Marcus Horan and especially Jerry Flannery – their scrum leader, as it were – will see some action over Christmas and that Paul O’Connell will be pushing behind Buckley or whomever from the start in Toulon.
Denis Leamy played superbly on Saturday, one of his best games in yonks, but as an aside, one wonders why O’Gara hasn’t been captaining the team again, as he did in the absence of O’Connell throughout the pool stages en route to their triumph in 2007-08.
But Toulon’s resources underline what a good signing Heineke van der Meuwe has been for Leinster (and his compatriot Richardt Strauss), despite the complaints that it’s meant him rotating with Healy.
This has kept Healy fresher and provided enlightening competition for the Leinster tyro. He doesn’t need to be starting 30-plus matches a season every year for the next decade or more, and the likely signing of Seán Cronin and return of Stan Wright should leave Leinster’s frontrow resources in rude health for some time to come.
