Pool Five Munster v Clermont Auvergne: Under their popular Kiwi coach Clermont have become a potent mix of power up front and pace out wide, writes Gerry Thornley.
Clermont Auvergne may have slipped into this season's Heineken European Cup a little below the radar, something of an unknown quantity, but as last Sunday's stunning 48-21 dissection of the Llanelli Scarlets reaffirmed, for much of the last year they have been the team in French club rugby.
For much of their history, they have probably been the worst underachievers in French club rugby. Backed heavily by the Michelin family, whose local plant provided much of the work in the city of Montferrand and generally employed virtually the entire squad, they've rarely been short of stellar overseas names to supplement the likes of Jean-Pierre Romeu.
Yet they have never won the cherished Bouclier du Brennus and have often been regarded as a big-spending retirement home. Boasting such marquee names as a vintage Olivier Magne, Tony Marsh and Gerald Merceron, in a six-year period around the turn of the Millennium, they reached two finals, two semi-finals and two quarter-finals, but fell into decline for the following four years, even flirting with relegation in 2003, their season spinning into freefall after two physically punishing back-to-back defeats to Leinster.
They were rescued then when hiring Olivier Saisset, but all changed utterly last season, thanks in the main to the arrival of Vern Cotter, the assistant coach to Robbie Deans at Canterbury Crusaders when they won Super 12 and Super 14 titles in 2005 and 2006, a tough-talking, no-nonsense, well-travelled Kiwi from the old school. It helped his talking could be done in French.
A powerful and technical if not especially celebrated number eight, Cotter began a nomadic 10-year tour of France at the end of the 1980s, first with Rumilly, where, he said, he learned a title was hard to win: "I lost a group B semi-final, and then a final in 1991."
Still in group B with Lourdes in 1995, when he became known as "Jules", he finally won the division two title.
Cotter had cut his teeth as a coach for seven seasons with the unfashionable Bay of Plenty in New Zealand, ultimately taking the province to their best ever season in 2004, when they won the Ranfurly Shield for the first time and reached the NPC semi-finals.
He was named New Zealand coach of the year before moving on to the Crusaders.
Nine years after leaving France, he returned to Clermont under the club presidency of René Fontes, through the mediation of a mutual friend.
"I was fine where I was. But l'ASM offered me a really sporting challenge. It wasn't just the easiness of coming, but I was looking for a challenge. I didn't know the club's history, that it had never won the championship, but getting to the final of the French championship in Paris is very special for French clubs with all their supporters."
Under Cotter, a fiery character the players apparently adore, Clermont not only became fitter but began playing with a mix of power up front and potent pace and strength out wide. As seen against Llanelli, few teams play with such depth and width - witness the way four of their seven tries were scored by the touchline-hugging Aurélien Rougerie and Julien Malzieu, regarded as the sensation of last season when the 24-year-old home-grown winger emerged from the shadows of Rougerie and David Bory to score nine championship tries.
Last season, Clermont led the French championship for much of the season, ultimately finishing within three points of Toulouse. They were also the leading points scorers, with 772 in 26 games.
Brock James, their unheralded 25-year-old signing from Western Force, emerged as the outhalf of the season and led the individual scoring charts with 374 points, while Rougerie (also a home-grown player who is now team captain) was the leading try scorer with 13. Incredibly, six of their pack along with scrumhalf Pierre Mignoni and Malzieu made the Rugby Hebdo team of the season.
As an aside, Clermont also cut a swathe through the European Challenge Cup, winning all their nine matches while scoring 38 tries and 302 points.
They avenged the 1999 and 2001 French final defeats to Toulouse in the semi-finals with a dramatic 20-15 win. In their eighth final, they led Stade Français 12-0 early in the second half and when James landed his fifth penalty to push them 18-16 back in front with four minutes to go, it seemed Clermont would reach their grail, only for Stade's lock Radike Samo, an end-of-season loan signing (since moved to Japan), to score the title-clinching try in the 78th minute.
Undeterred, Clermont went shopping. They still sign big; witness the arrival of World Cup-winning captain John Smit as an option at hooker to Argentina's magnificent Mario Ledesma; Marius Joubert, Alex King from the European champions, Wasps, and Julien Bonnaire, from nearby rivals Bourgoin, after he emerged as one of France's players of the World Cup.
After a 23-17 opening-day loss away to Stade Français and a 33-20 win at home to Montpellier, they have returned this season seemingly with renewed vigour, judging by last Sunday's win.
Their selection for tomorrow's meeting with Munster shows 14 changes from last Sunday, which may or may not suggest that - with five points already amassed in La Poule de la Mort - they regard this as a match from which anything will be a bonus. They clearly have one eye on next Saturday's tricky trip to Albi, followed by another away game against Bourgoin. But it also underlines the phenomenal depth of their squad, assuredly the best in their history.
That began in 1911 when a group of young directors in Michelin, who were passionate about sport, decided under the name of Marcel Michelin to put an all-sports complex at the disposal of the people of Clermont-Ferrand. So was created l'ASM (the Michelin Sporting Association) which, among other sports and activities, played rugby and football.
As well as football and rugby pitches, the club provided an athletics track and a gymnasium. It is situated on a site in the Marcel Michelin sports park, on the land of the old Montferrand factory. Then, in 1922, following the recommendations of the French Sports' Athletics Federation, it changed its name, if not its initials, in becoming ASM (the Association of Montferrand Sports). Only as recently as 2004, they changed their name from Montferrand to Clermont Auvergne, thereby taking in the greater catchment of Auvergne.
In times past, Clermont-Ferrand had a name for being a somewhat dour, industrialised city, but the French presidency of Giscard d'Estaing, who came from the city, helped change that, with motorways, an airport and other improvements to its infrastructure.
Cotter talks about the surrounding countryside being akin to New Zealand. From his house he can see the Auvergne mountains, though he misses the sea, and the farm he bought near Bay of Plenty, close to where he grew up: "I love surfing. I use the long board. My biggest tube? I tried it in Jefferson Bay in South Africa and ended up on a rock. Idiot."
Rougerie says: "He doesn't intimidate us but he has a presence. He goes to town when we let ourselves down and shouldn't have."
Cotter and Rougerie share a passion for cars, specifically their BMWs.
"Mine's a sports car," specifies Cotter. "I go for a drive in the countryside, I look at the animals, and think about rugby. I find the best combinations in the car."
Cotter, regarded as the best signing of the year in French club rugby, has been the key to Clermont's rejuvenation. In his very strong French south-west accent, he likes to play deadpan jokes with the media: "I'm a normal dad. My daughter (Holly, four) and my son (Thomas, two) have rugby helmets. I've installed a yoke in the garden and on Sunday, training." He gives a blank look, and then a laugh. "It's not true of course."
Cotter is rough and rugged, and in many ways well suited to the Auvergne region, which becomes bitterly cold in winter. Yet you will invariably find him running sessions in shorts and T-shirt, and he demands players wear the same gear.
Jean-Marc Lhermet, the club's former captain, number eight and French international and one of Clermont's driving forces, explains: "He wants them to train 100 per cent as if they were playing a match, and when it's freezing they train in shorts."
Cotter, 45 years old, weighs almost 190 kilos. An imposing man with his shaven dome, he's the son of a sheep-shearer with a degree in agriculture.
"He is the man the club required for his strictness" said Fontes, who envisages Cotter staying for another two seasons, when his current contract expires.
Asked what he'd like to leave as his legacy aside from a cherished Bouclier, Cotter said: "If I can leave with the team in better shape than when I arrived, I'll be happy."
Asked if they had underachieved so far, he said: "The players had enormous qualities, but hadn't confidence. A lack of strictness? I don't know how to say it - a line of conduct perhaps."
But as long as Vern stays, you sense these perennial underachievers may be about to start achieving.
ASM Clermont Auvergne
Founded: 1922
Ground: Stade Marcel-Michelin. Capacity 13,850
French championship: Beaten finalist eight times (1936, 1937, 1970, 1978, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2007)
Coupe du France (Challenge Yves-du-Manoir):Winners three times. (1938, 1976, 1986).
Heineken Cup: four appearances (1999-2000 q/f, 2001-02 q/f, 2002-03 pool stages, 2005-06 pool stages)
European Challenge Cup: Champions in 1998-99, 2006-07. Runners-up 2003-04
Coaches: Vern Cotter, Josef Schmidt.
Players out: Michel Dieude, flanker (Racing-Metro), Alexandre Peclier, outhalf (Lyon), Brice Miguel, hooker (Beziers), Jerome Moreau, scrumhalf (Bordeaux), Alexandre Bastin, prop (Narbonne), Adrien Falieres, hooker (La Rochelle), Tony Marsh, centre (retired), Gonzalo Longo, number eight (retired), Alessandro Troncon, scrumhalf (retired).
Players in: John Smit, hooker (Natal Sharks, SA), Christophe Samson, lock (La Rochelle), Fabien Alexandre, backrow (Dax), Julien Bonnaire, backrow (Bourgoin), John Senio, scrumhalf (Edinburgh), Alex King, outhalf (Wasps), Benoit Baby, centre (Toulouse), Marius Joubert, centre (Cheetahs, SA)
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