Peter Jackson: At least CJ Stander remained standing to the bitter end

“I’m going to miss this place,” said Stander, looking round at the empty Thomond Park stands through watery eyes. Not as much as they are going to miss him

CJ Stander receives his 50th Champions Cup cap after Munster’s exit at the hands of Toulouse on Saturday. Picture: Dan Sheridan

When the end came, at least CJ Stander got to walk off on his own two feet, a luxury not always afforded to five-star Munster generals or global superstars.

At least the gods granted him the small mercy of standing toe to toe against superior opponents and trading blow for blow, standing up and fighting like hell until the final bell rang, tolling the death knell on his last European campaign. Toulouse were simply too good.

When they counted Munster out, Stander was still standing, unlike the greatest of his captaincy predecessors. Paul O’Connell had been condemned to a different exit six years earlier, his face contorted in pain after tearing a hamstring virtually off the bone during a World Cup tie against France in Cardiff.

It denied him the opportunity of taking Ireland where they had never gone before and the promise of a richly rewarding season or two in the sun at Toulon. Limerick’s grand old warrior had to be carted off in a motorised buggy flat on his back, never to play again.

Usain Bolt finished up flat on his face two years later, startling evidence that not even the most famous sportsman on the planet post-Muhammad Ali could claim immunity from human frailty. Instead of whizzing the Jamaicans home in the 4x100 metre relay at the World Championships in London, he collapsed in a heap without a leg to stand on.

At least, Stander went the distance, justifiably proud of players who had given every last drop in a desperate search for another of the miracles they used to work in tandem with the Red Army. Their confinement to barracks en masse made it impossible to work another but at least CJ could bow out of Europe at his spiritual home, a privilege denied one of his most distinguished predecessors.

Christian Cullen, surely the best full back of the professional era, ought to have gone out in the finest showbiz tradition by leaving an adoring multitude clamouring for more. Instead, recurring injury condemned him to the most anti-climactic of exits, one far from the madding crowd.

The All Black made his last stand for Munster in circumstances which, with due respect to all concerned, could hardly have been more mundane: a midweek match against the Dragons in front of a few thousand at Musgrave Park on April 28, 2007.

For another of the greats, the grand stage and matching crowd — 66,000 at Twickenham for the 2005 English Premiership Grand Final — made the result all the harder to bear. Martin Johnson’s last match for Leicester coincided with the Tigers being blitzed 39-14 by Wasps.

Old Beetle Brows, never one to let emotion get the better of him, rode off into the sunset after making a coldly clinical admission: ‘’We didn’t play. And that’s a nasty feeling.’’

At least CJ is void of any such feeling because Munster did play. They kept playing even when the game had been spirited from them by a team of conjurors whose sleight of hand and winged feet gave them a mesmeric quality.

Unlike Johnson at Twickenham, Stander shed tears once the reality hit home that, for him, Munster in Europe had finished for good. “I’m going to miss this place,” he said, looking round at the empty stands through watery eyes.

Not as much as they are going to miss him.

Chickens home to roost for PRO14

Racing’s Louis Dupichot is tackled by Edinburgh’s Damien Hoyland at Paris La Défense Arena. Edinburgh’s six-try runaround was the worst performance on a bad weekend for PRO14 sides. Picture: Dave Winter/Inpho

This time two years ago the PRO14 went into black-slapping overdrive. Hadn’t five of their teams just commandeered a majority of places in the quarter-finals of the Champions’ Cup and didn’t that just go to show that theirs was a better competition than the English Premiership and the Top 14?

Yes, they had and no, it did not. Of the five, only Leinster are still there and they made it without the hassle of having to play. Three of the other four — Munster, Glasgow, Edinburgh — had to turn up if only to be knocked out. The fifth, Ulster, had already been downgraded to the Challenge Cup.

The bigger the picture, the worse it looks for the PRO14. Of ten teams across both competitions, nine fell by the wayside with Benetton the solitary exception. Edinburgh’s was the worst capitulation, given a seven-try runaround by Racing. Scarlets completed the Welsh exodus, wiped out by Sale before half-time.

Cardiff, 12 points up going into the last ten minutes against a London Irish team reduced to 14 men for almost the entire second half, still managed to find a way out.

In a dazzling finale, the Exiles hit them with three converted tries in eight minutes. Munster may have gone but Declan Kidney keeps the flag flying — next stop Bath on Saturday.

The national team may have won as many Grand Slams as England, France and Ireland combined over the last 16 years but their regional teams continue to exit Europe with a haste indecent enough to raise suspicions that Nigel Farage must be running them.

Despite the presence of nine Welsh internationals, Ospreys duly flopped out at home to Newcastle, followed rapidly by Dragons whose late implosion to Northampton matched that of Cardiff’s in London. Their demise will not have surprised Jerry Flannery, for one.

“This season the PRO14 has not been competitive outside the Irish teams whatsoever,” said Munster’s hooker in both their winning European finals now coaching at Harlequins. “It’s been the worst I have seen.”

TMO suffering blind spots?

Clermont are alive and kicking with renewed hope that maybe they are close, at long last, to losing their accursed status as the best club not to win Europe’s blue riband trophy. They owe such a state of bliss to another example of what their victims would describe as a misuse of technology.

Wasps, spreadeagled on the ropes in desperate defiance as Clermont went through five minutes of relentless pounding, finally cracked to what must have been about the 40th phase. Kotaro Matsushima’s try three minutes into stoppage time tied the match at 25-all.

Neutral observers and, no doubt, some of the long-suffering Les Jaunards feared it might have all been in vain.

During the protracted build-up, Morgan Parra’s pass to Fritz Lee near the left corner appeared to have gone forward, right in front of the assistant referee. At the very least it would have been worth a check.

Instead, Camille Lopez goaled the decisive conversion without the referee, former-Munster and Leicester scrum half Frank Murphy, asking for it to be reviewed. Referees cannot see everything, in which event, it was surprising that none of the other three officials, including the TMO, Brian MacNeice, thought it worth a look.

The same happened a few hours later at Welford Road when Alex Wootton shredded the Tigers to bring Connacht back to within two points.

Welsh referee Adam Jones awarded the try subject to a review for a possible double-movement which was duly examined at length but again nobody saw fit to check the legality of Caolin Blade’s scoring pass.

Growing Gallic monopoly

Anyone glancing at the composition of the last eight in the Champions’ Cup would be hard-pushed to believe that Wales pipped France to the Six Nations title only a fortnight earlier. Five French clubs have reached the last eight for the first time, while the Welsh have been obliterated from both competitions.

The Gallic monopoly guarantees that at least two are bound to reach the semi-finals, a state of affairs that will do nothing to ease Toulon’s sense of injustice at being denied a crack at Leinster because of a positive Covid test.

Club president Bernard Lemaitre’s “anger and disgust” prompted him to talk of Toulon boycotting the tournament.

My team of the weekend

15 Dillyn Leyds (La Rochelle)

14 Keith Earls (Munster)

13 Henry Slade (Exeter)

12 Levani Botia (La Rochelle)

11 Matthis Lebel (Toulouse)

10 Romain Ntamack (Toulouse)

9 Antoine Dupont (Toulouse)

1 Cyrille Baille (Toulouse)

2 Akker van der Merwe (Sale)

3 Charlie Faumuina (Toulouse)

4 Jonny Hill (Exeter)

5 Will Skelton (La Rochelle)

6 Gavin Coombes (Munster)

7 Kevin Gourdon (La Rochelle)

8 Sam Simmonds (Exeter)