Stade Toulousain ready to hit their stride

ON RUGBY:AS LEINSTER discovered in their 14-year quest for the mountain top, which was reached with back-to-back wins over Euro giants Munster and Leicester, and then having run into Clermont and Toulouse last season, nothing comes easy in the Heineken Cup. And so it is again.

Having put away the current leading side in England, two-time winners and five-time finalists Leicester, in the quarter-finals, Joe Schmidt’s squad must now overcome the leading side in France in four-time Heineken Cup winners and six-time finalists Toulouse.

Stade Toulousain are, quite simply, the most decorated club in the world, and that includes provincial powers. The Canterbury Crusaders may be the Super force of the Southern Hemisphere, but they are primarily a 21st century phenomenon. Toulouse have been a phenomenon, pretty much, since 1985.

That was the year former players and French legends Pierre Villepreux and Jean-Claude Skrela took over the club and transformed its ethos, with an emphasis on developing its academy production line – incorporating education as well as rugby – and a certain style of play. But it was when another former player, Guy Noves, returned as coach in 1993 – having walked out on a point of principle in 1989 – in tandem with club president René Bouscatel that the club took off.

They have won 10 of their unequalled 17 French titles since 1985 (and lost four finals), and seven have been since 1993, in addition to their four European crowns.

So, if Leinster couldn’t have had tougher visitors for the quarter-finals, then the same is true of Toulouse at the semi-final stages: the farther they go in competitions, the better they become. They have won six of their nine European semi-finals, including their last five.

The French club game has become the equivalent of the English Premier League in football. There were crowds of 65,000 in Stade de France and 60,000 in the Stade Velodrome for Saturday’s Top 14 games between Stade Francais and Clermont, and Toulon and Toulouse, and there was even 30,000 at Lyon for their local, top-of-the-table derby with Oyannaux.

The Top 14 is awash with money. Matt Giteau, Bakkies Botha, Sébastien Tillous-Borde and Alexis Palisson have already been signed up by Toulon, with Mathieu Bastareaud linked with a move there, and there are reports of Dan Carter and Sonny Bill Williams heading the extraordinary post-World Cup exodus to France by joining Racing Metro and Toulon for salaries well in excess of €1 million per year.

Toulouse are no paupers, with their budget estimated to be close on €30 million, though it certainly seems the comparatively nouveau riche of Racing, Toulon, Clermont and new big-spenders on the block Bayonne spend bigger. Toulouse are set to lose Byron Kelleher, David Skrela and Frederic Michalak, but have lined up Lionel Beauxis from Stade Francais and, apparently, either or both of Luke Burgess and Mike Phillips.

Winning matches and winning trophies is simply in their DNA. Others come and go but Toulouse, ever-present in the semi-finals since the Top 14 play-offs were introduced, are always there or thereabouts. And there Toulouse sit again for the last few months, still the pacesetters.

Schmidt and his coaching staff probably had already begun their research on Toulouse before parking it this week to ready themselves for their trek to Aironi on Saturday. There was a period last October when Toulouse scored 157 points in four matches, including a stunning 38-29 win over Perpignan, but for the most part they have done just enough, winning all 14 games at home in league and Europe, and picking up four wins, a draw and sufficient bonus points to stay ahead of the posse.

Their squad strength is ridiculous, but above all they are a smart team, full of smart players. Leinster need only to reflect on the typical intelligence Toulouse brought to the semi-final last season. Aside from steamrollering the Leinster scrum, for the killer second-half try Yannick Jauzion attacked up the middle from off-the-top lineout ball on the left, but was then a decoy as Skrela found Florian Fritz with a skip pass which launched Clemont Poitrenaud and Vincent Clerc in the wider channels.

While their offloading game remains, they are also a team of all seasons and conditions. They can bring anything to the party, be it a tight, set-piece game for mid-winter or a high-tempo, running and offloading game on a dry track. They are, as one French writer puts them, a chameleon team. In Maxime Medard they have the Top 14’s supreme finisher on 13 tries, three clear of his nearest challenger Julien Malzieu of Clermont.

They sit four points clear of Racing, who lie second just seven points ahead of ninth-placed Bayonne, with all of those sides bar Perpignan sharing the same number of wins, 14 apiece, and facing a titanic struggle for two semi-final and top-six play-off places.

By contrast, having completed their away programme, Noves has more wriggle room than at a similar stage last season. He could afford to make a dozen changes from the starting team employed in the dramatic Heineken Cup quarter-final extra-time win away to Biarritz for last Saturday’s 21-9 defeat to Toulon. A bonus point win at home to Bourgoin – broke, bottom of the table and long since relegated – next Saturday will assure them of a semi-final place, thereby rendering their final home game against Clermont academic and leaving them free to focus fully on Leinster, as their domestic semi-final is not until a week after the Heineken Cup final in Cardiff.

The likelihood is that Kelleher (sidelined since December with a calf problem), Michalak (he picked up an ankle injury in the win away to Perpignan three weeks ago which may also have ended his season) and Thierry Dusautoir (though running again lightly) will all miss Dublin, but they still have the home-grown Nicolas Bezy and Jean-Marck Dussain (a possible French half-back pairing of the future) as well as Skrela.

They may be a tad long in the tooth, there are question marks around the hunger levels of such a sated squad, but this is the time of the season when they get a whiff of silverware in their nostrils and, thus, when they come into their own.