Peter Jackson: Northampton Saints turn into sinners
They arrived in Dublin with a weakened team ripe for capitulation against opponents more than capable of applying the guillotine. Leinster, never slow to recognise a white flag when they see one, turned up the heat and gave the Saints what they deserved, a Christmas roasting.
Nine tries and 60 points ensured the humiliation invited by the English club’s calculated decision to leave five front-line internationals behind. In doing so, they short-changed more than the near 40,000 at the Aviva Stadium who bought their tickets on the reasonable assumption that they were paying to see a contest.
Northampton short-changed the other two clubs in their pool, Castres and Montpellier. They also short-changed the tournament itself, sacrificing Europe to conserve their energy for the parochial matter of the English Premiership.
As the beleaguered head honcho with his neck on the block, Jim Malinder spoke pre-match about ‘three massive games coming up,’ referring to the domestic chores against Sale, Gloucester and Bristol. In the next breath, referring to his team converting a 33-point home beating into a 9-point win seven days later against the same opponent in the same competition, he said: ‘’Everything is possible.’’
Nobody told Leinster who duly made riotous progress towards a home quarter-final. The collateral damage to the credibility of Europe’s blue riband event by their opponents is surely too serious for the promoters to ignore.
Ominously, theirs is not an isolated offence. Grenoble, bottom of the French Top 14, put out a second team for both Challenge Cup ties against Ospreys, losing by an aggregate margin of 130-10. Mis-matches on such a scale invite ridicule.
For the first time since the clubs wrestled control of their event from the national Unions, the Anglo-French forces running European Professional Club Rugby must skip the soft option and put two of their own in the dock.
Turning a blind eye would simply give every other club carte blanche to pull the plug after a couple of defeats and show the supposedly elite competition the lack of respect Northampton showed in Dublin on Saturday evening.
That is in no way intended to detract from Leinster filling their boots on a scale not touched since they almost rattled up a century against Bourgoin twelve seasons ago. They, of course, only ever made up the numbers.
Northampton, European finalists on four occasions since beating Munster at Twickenham in 2000, were supposed to be better than that.
“I’m not sure easy is the right word,’’ said Leinster head coach Leo Cullen, a decent man who would never dream of making capital out of anyone’s misery.
Reds could pay price after Gauzere sees double
Should Munster miss a home quarter-final, they will have further cause to curse being on the wrong end of surely the strangest volte face ever made by an international referee.
Pascal Gauzere’s abrupt change of mind over the legality or otherwise of Simon Zebo’s tackle on Adam Thompstone made all the difference between Leicester winning and Munster losing.
The Irish flier’s intervention was so fractionally late that it hardly justified reference to the TMO, Eric Gauzins.
Gauzere asked to check for a late tackle, then decided no offence had been committed when he saw the evidence on the big screen.
Gauzere: “I’m going to go to touch for the line-out.”
Gauzins: “Do you want to see another angle?”
Gauzere after watching it again: “It’s late. A penalty and a yellow card. Do you agree?”
Gauzins: “Yellow card because of the other penalties.”
That Zebo had done nothing to incur a penalty let alone a card made it all sound double-Dutch. Owen Williams, a Welsh-speaker from the tongue-twisting village of Ystradgynlais (Uh-strad-gun-lice), didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth before hoofing a last-minute winner from inside his own half, just as Ronan O’Gara had done at the same place six seasons earlier.
Ducuing’s leap of faith ends with red card
Now that red cards appear to be all the rage, nobody had more reason to look bewildered at being on the wrong end of one than Bordeaux wing Nans Ducuing.
All he did was move into position to field a box-kick during the team’s home tie against Exeter, his eyes never straying from the ball.
He would almost certainly not have seen his opposite wing, Olly Woodburn, hare off along the left touchline in pursuit from a suspiciously off-side position.
As he jumped to make the catch, Ducuing had no way of knowing that his English opponent would take off like Javier Sotomayor soaring towards another Olympic gold in the high jump.
Woodburn’s leap took to him an altitude above Ducuing, then still expecting the ball. The inevitable collision brought the Exeter player crashing down on his neck, mightily fortunate not to have broken it.
The referee, John Lacey, ex-Munster, of course, consulted with his TMO, Brian MacNeice also from Ireland.
Ducuing waited for the game to re-start, only to find that he was for the high jump instead, a red card staring him in the face.
The way I saw it, the Frenchman had done nothing wrong. A case could have been made against Woodburn for a challenge reckless enough to have left him grateful for the small mercy of being able to walk off the pitch instead of coming home in a wheelchair.
Halfpenny misses costly for Toulon
Leigh Halfpenny, back on familiar territory in Llanelli yesterday amid reports of Toulon hiking his salary ever upwards to €800,000, left the triple European champions counting the cost of three missed penalties. His unusual failure off the tee, from short, medium and long range, allowed Scarlets to cling to a priceless victory by a single point. Ten second-half penalties, extorted by the Masters of the Monster Munch, proved there are still things money cannot buy.
Dan Carter discovered that in Glasgow on Friday night after surely the most anonymous match of his stellar career. Subbed within an hour, he came off with almost as many noughts against his name as the six on his salary — zeroes all round for breaks, carries, opponents beaten and metres made.
Carty’s winning kick
Once upon a time long ago, Jack Carty from Athlone might have been a Premier League footballer. Southampton gave him a trial but, for one reason or another, it never worked out, for which Connacht and the whole of Ireland will be forever grateful.
His soaring conversion in the third minute of red clock-time, from near touch on the ‘wrong’ side for a right-footed kicker, gave Connacht another mighty scalp in Wasps. He began the night by missing a penalty amid tut-tuts over his strike ratio. How wonderful that he should finish it by keeping the Pro12 champions on track for the last eight.
Qualified possibles
1 Saracens (18 pts), 2 Clermont (17), 3 Leinster (16), 4 Wasps (13), 5 Glasgow (13), 6 Toulouse or Connacht (13), 7 Munster (11, one game more to play than the rest), 8 Montpellier.
Toulon (10), Ulster (9), Castres (9), Bordeaux (9).
Leicester (8), Scarlets (8).
