Planet Rugby

Today's other stories in brief

Leinster iron out bugs

The wry smile Brian O'Driscoll gave to his team-mates Shane Horgan and Denis Hickie when he scored the intercept try against Agen on Saturday probably told more than he would have liked.

The Leinster captain grabbed the ball in his own 22 and ran the length of the pitch to score, before hunkering over to regain his breath. It wasn't the Irish centre's accustomed posture. But there was a reason for that.

O'Driscoll and his front-row colleague Brian Blaney had been unwell during the week in the build-up to the match, O'Driscoll with a stomach complaint and hooker Blaney with a bug that required medication. Despite the disrupted week both lined out anyway.

Shortly after his first try, O'Driscoll was to get physically sick on the pitch before going on to score two more tries and miss one that perhaps he should have scored.

Blaney also had a storming game. Who says perfect planning pays dividends in Europe?

Caucau a tad casual

Agen were playing Leinster having just emerged from one of the most severe bans handed out to a club by the ERC.

They were banned from all European rugby competitions for the 2002/2003 season by an ERC committee that also imposed a suspended ban for three years from the start of the 2003/2004 season.

The ERC also levied a suspended fine of €100,000 on the club starting from the same date, punishment to take effect if Agen committed any further "act of misconduct in an ERC competition" during the period 2003-2006.

On January 12th of the 2002-2003 season the French team lost a European Shield pool one match against Ebbw Vale 59-10. Victory would not have been enough to send the Welsh club through to the knockout stages at Agen's expense but the fact they outscored the French team by nine tries to one took them through on tries scored.

Press reports quoted various Agen players and officials to the effect they had lost on purpose in order to concentrate on the French championship.

You couldn't say that on Saturday, though Rupeni Caucaunibuca's casualness in chasing down Brian O'Driscoll for that breakaway try raised some eyebrows.

Breathtaking stats

Much has been said and written about Ireland's first-half performance against Australia in Lansdowne Road last month. Impressions can be often misleading but the stats for the game tend to bear out the fact that this was one hell of a performance.

Of 119 passes made by the Irish, only 16 went astray, giving Ireland 103 completed passes. When you consider Australia's 64 passes included 18 errors, or 46 complete passes, you can see why Ireland won the match.

Eddie O'Sullivan's crew also won 44 balls in their opponents' 22 compared to nine won by Australia in the Irish 22. In that first 40 minutes Ireland held on to the ball for 19 minutes and 40 seconds compared to the Aussies, who had the precious orb for just over nine minutes.

Figures match performances

People keep asking why Irish rugby is flying so high these days and you may point to the relatively quiet GAA season or the flat international soccer team. But the impression of rugby being on a high in Ireland is born out by attendances at matches.

There were nine European Cup ties on Saturday in France, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Of them all, Leinster's game at Lansdowne Road drew a significantly bigger crowd than any of the others, the Dublin game attracting 4,000 more than even the second-best-attended match, London Irish v Ulster, which drew 14,675 to the Madejski Stadium.

According to ERC official figures none of the other games even made double figures, Border Reivers' game against Biarritz attracting only 1,373 fans in Scotland.

In descending order, it went Leinster 18,652; London Irish 14,675; Gloucester v Edinburgh 9,749; Llanelli v Toulouse 9,383; Bourgoin v Leicester 7,200; Castres v Perpignan 7,000; Parma v Northampton 2,300; Calvisano v Ospreys 1,500 and Border Reivers v Biarritz 1,373.

No wonder Bourgoin have moved the match against Munster to Geneva.

Quote of the week

"When England won the World Cup in 2003, it probably seemed to the outside world that we were travelling on a gleaming, modern cruise liner. We were not - we were on the Titanic. I realised it even as Martin Johnson held the trophy above his head in Sydney. It is personally shattering for me to say this but winning the World Cup was the worst thing that ever happened to the England team."

- Clive Woodward on England's troubles.