Stringer signing is a coup for Saracens

FROM THE BLINDSIDE:Moving to Saracens on loan is perfect for Peter Stringer. Being the third scrumhalf is no place for someone of his experience, writes ALAN QUINLAN

THE HARDEST thing you face as you reach the last few years of you career is the thought that you aren’t the automatic choice you once were. You’ve spent all those years being thrown the jersey and then all of a sudden, it’s somebody else’s turn. You’re left with a choice – you can decide to take it on the chin or you can change your situation. It didn’t surprise me at all to see Peter Stringer take the second option.

Going from being number one with your province and country for a decade to playing in an A game a couple of weeks ago has to be a shock to the system.

Conor Murray and Tomás O’Leary being ahead of him hurts a lot, especially since Stringer’s still in such great condition. He’s never been a drinker or a smoker, he’s always taken the game so seriously and done everything he can to compete at the highest level. Once it became clear the two lads weren’t going anywhere, he had to find somewhere else to further his career.

Moving to Saracens on loan is perfect for him. Being the third scrumhalf in a province is no place for someone of his experience. Every province needs two high-quality number nines to rotate the position between them.

It’s the same at Leinster with Isaac Boss and Eoin Reddan – one starts, one finishes. The guy who doesn’t start isn’t really dropped, he’s just used at different times in the game to fill different needs for different game plans.

But when you’re third-choice behind quality players like that, you’re going nowhere. Peter has another couple of years ahead of him so I couldn’t have imagined him being happy to live with that prospect. He would have seen no point in getting more and more frustrated the harder he worked to get into the team. It’s a great coup for Saracens to get him for a few months since they’re going through a fairly bad injury crisis at scrumhalf at the minute.

Peter’s career is proof that even these days with all the physicality in the game, you don’t have to be a huge man to be successful. The same goes for Wales’s Shane Williams who I was delighted to see sign off in style last Saturday against Australia. I remember playing against Shane when he started out and back then he had a lot of ground to make up if he was ever going to reach the top. He never put the fear of God into you in those days. He never looked like somebody you had to worry about.

Small guys are like that – they have to work harder to get noticed. But as the years went by he got stronger and faster and rose to the top of the game. He destroyed Ireland a few times, Munster as well, and now he walks away from international rugby respected by everyone.

Players are getting bigger across the board but there’s always going to be room in the game for the Stringers and the Williamses. There has to be. The appeal of rugby was always that there was room for every shape and size and if we move away from that and just make it a game for massive fellas then we’ll be in trouble.

Because all we’ll be left with then is a very predictable game of collisions. As it is, some of the excitement has already gone out of the game. It can very often be robotic and defence based with no spark and no bit of difference in it. Everything is very structured and you’re lucky if you see any more than a couple of line breaks in any game. That’s why Shane Williams got such a big send-off last Saturday.

THE NEXTtwo weekends are huge in the Heineken Cup. The middle two sets of matches are the ones that really determine what happens to your season. It's usually the only time of the year in any competition that you play back-to-back games against the same side so it puts a mental challenge in front of you as much as a physical one. You very rarely have that in the Pro 12 unless you're making up fixtures that were lost to the weather and you never do it at international level. So it can feel a little unnatural sometimes if you're not used to it.

Everything is heightened when you’ve got to play a team again the following week. You shake hands when the first game is over but you know the game isn’t over at all. We played Perpignan one year and I shook hands with their number seven at the end and he was pointing in my face telling me he’d see me the following weekend on his home ground. They were a totally different team in the second game.

With home advantage being such a huge thing in the Heineken Cup, teams are always trying to find a psychological edge that will get them through the away ties. I always found it a bit easier to play the first of these back-to-back games away. There’s always a bit more of a fear factor in you when you’re on the road and that makes you want to fight for everything right from the off. You want to get over there and claim some of the psychological ground, you want to put them under pressure from their fans and their own press.

Munster and Leinster are both playing away this weekend and a result for either or both of them will give them control of their destiny.

Leinster’s draw in Montpellier was huge and if they follow it up in Bath this weekend, they will put their stamp on their pool. It’s their mental toughness in Europe that really stands out about Leinster these days and they will need every bit of it on Sunday.

Imagine you’re a Bath player or even a Bath supporter getting ready for this game. The Heineken Cup champions are coming to your patch. They’re missing Brian O’Driscoll. Anything they take from you this weekend is something you will have to try to take back the following one. No question about it – you’re going to throw everything you can at them. Leinster definitely have it in them to withstand it but they will have to hang in there for a while.

The same goes for Munster when they go to Scarlets. Dougie Howlett’s injury looks to be serious one and it robs Munster of the one thing they can’t afford to lose at the moment – experience. With Jerry Flannery and David Wallace already on the sidelines, you’re missing out on years and years of experience. Not to mention that with Keith Earls and Felix Jones out as well, that’s a whole back three unavailable.

The upside for Munster is that they’ll be playing a side without a huge amount of Heineken Cup experience themselves. Scarlets shocked the whole competition with their bonus-point win over Northampton. They’ve made huge progress over the past few years and they’ve done it on a very limited budget. They’ve brought through young Welsh players and I think because of that, Northampton probably underestimated them a bit. The one good thing about that result is that Munster will have no excuse for making the same mistake.

Ulster’s task is pretty simple. They have Aironi at home and away and in all reality, they need a couple of bonus-point wins. With their last game in the pool a trip to play Clermont in France, they’re going to rely on every point they can get their hands on. They won’t be trying to score four tries in the first 15 minutes at Ravenhill on Friday night but they know anything less by the end of the day will be a setback.

As for Connacht, it’s a shame they’re on such a terrible losing streak to coincide with their first shot at the Heineken Cup. Losing to Treviso last weekend in the Pro 12 just goes to show how low confidence is in the province. You can see the squad Eric Elwood has just isn’t strong enough to stretch across the two competitions. They’ve lost eight on the bounce now and after a decent start in the Pro 12, they’re struggling badly with only Dragons and Aironi below them.

Bringing Gloucester to the Sportsground on Saturday will be a shot in the arm. They need something to happen soon to build up their confidence because the worst thing would be for Connacht to play a season in the Heineken Cup and end up looking back on it as a bad experience. Fair enough, Gloucester aren’t exactly the team you’d be hoping to play in order to build confidence – they showed against Toulouse their away form is very respectable. But if Connacht can get after them from the start, they can go about salvaging something from the competition.

For the other three Irish teams, who have targeted getting out of their pools, this next fortnight is crucial. You need to get to January holding your destiny in your own hands. Get the results and pick up the points that get you to where you need to be in January. Whether that’s picking up a losing bonus away from home or going all out to rack up 10 points from the two games, everyone’s needs are different. But it’s these two weekends that will decide how you’re going to be set for the rest of the competition.