Peter Jackson: Was Munster's win over Wasps better than the Miracle Match?

Patrick Campbell of Munster goes over for their sides' second try. Picture: David Rogers/Getty Images

Before Munster sent their 12 novices to Coventry on an assignment dismissed by many as Mission: Impossible, few would have heard of them.

Scott Buckley, Patrick Campbell, Eoin O’Connor, Daniel Okeke, James French and Jonathan Wren. Tony Butler, Ethan Coughlan, John Forde, Conor Moloney, Mark Donnelly and Declan Moore. Who?

They had one thing in common: their names wouldn’t have rung a solitary bell in the pulverising world of pro rugby. Hardly a surprise considering their collective total of first-team matches added up to a big, fat zero.

They had something else in common, an inability to remember anything of Munster’s most celebrated victory over an English opponent, on January 18, 2003 for the perfectly good reason that they had only just been born.

The Miracle Match against Gloucester passed them by in their prams. Now, against all the odds and at the first time of asking, under Academy coach Ian Costello, they worked one of their own which at the risk of being damned for heresy, eclipses the original.

A mighty statement which demands some defending given that Munster 18 years ago had to beat Gloucester, then top of the English Premiership, by 27 points and at least four tries to qualify for the last eight. They won 33-6 and European rugby has hardly stopped talking about it ever since.

Now they have a new one to talk about, one which will stand out on its own because never before had Munster gone into a Champions’ Cup tie without 34 members of their professional squad, the vast majority of them marooned in quarantine by Covid protocols.

Despite more mundane problems of their own, Wasps would have seen it as a welcome diversion from their slide down the Premiership. Peter O’Mahony’s cover-tackle to deny Thomas Young a second-minute try proved to be the cue for Wasps to go to pieces.

Brad Shields’ dismissal for a dangerous tackle within the opening half hour can be seen in retrospect as part of a script so outrageous that nobody would have believed it. It would clear the way for a win, not by an inch but by a mile, borne not by a fusillade of penalties but on a flood of tries.

Young Munster’s Campbell, a 19-year-old law student, sliced through for the second in a style reminiscent of Christian Cullen in his pomp. Scott Buckley, the 21-year-old hooker, started and finished the fourth as though he’d been doing it all his life.

Okeke, another teenager eager to emulate Keith Earls and Eddie Halvey by going all the way from Thomond RFC to the Test arena, almost added one of his own towards the end.

By then the five starting debutants had been joined by seven more from the bench, including a trio from Ennis.

At 19, Tony Butler deputised for one international half back, Joey Carbery, another 19-year-old, Ethan Coughlan, for another in Conor Murray. Conor Moloney of Young Munster completed an Ennis treble which will be enshrined in the town’s sporting folklore.

The other club suffering from an even greater Covid affliction, Cardiff, played with boundless enterprise and courage against Toulouse despite losing 7-39.

They fell short because, one, Antoine Dupont belongs to a superior planet and, two, because their novices weren’t as effective as Munster’s.

All O’Mahony asked for was ‘a bit of luck and a bit of dog.’ As one who knows how it feels to be on the receiving end, one came by way of a red card for his opposing captain, the other from forward pups like Buckley, French, O’Connor and Okeke playing like prize winners from Crufts.

Some old dogs never doubted the outcome, like Billy Holland. “They are going to win,” the veteran ex-lock told anyone who cared to listen. “I mightn’t know some of the names but I have full faith in them. I think it’s the sense of pride when your backs are against the wall. You grow up in Munster wishing you get to play for Munster. It’s their dream.”

They lived it yesterday in a way which ensures that their names are written in gold alongside the greats. As for the Red Army, they are becoming accustomed to such things.

Most fans, if they are very lucky to be following a team reinforced by an indomitable mentality, see a miracle once in a lifetime.

Munster’s are now getting used to seeing them once in a generation, at the very least.

Bath have become the very antithesis of a champion

The dictionary definition of a champion could scarcely be more explicit: ‘a person, plant or animal that has defeated all others in a competition.’

Despite such incontrovertible reassurance, more than a few who witnessed Leinster’s latest no-contest in Dublin will be perplexed that the word carries a very different meaning when applied to the Heineken Champions Cup. It helps explain why the biggest losers in the English Premiership could rock up to The Aviva as part of the all-conquering ensemble.

Bath gave the impression of having lost their way and ended up thrust onto a stage beyond their status. They wore the bemused look of a team asking itself the same rhetorical question: ‘What are we doing here?’

On the faded list of past European masters, Bath can be found somewhere in between Nottingham Forest of 1979-80 and the Ryder Cup golfers who fell at the ‘War on the Shore’ in 1991. For a club once way ahead of its time, it’s even worse than that.

Sadly, Bath have become the very antithesis of a champion, unable to break the losing habit. They arrived in Dublin with a season’s record of having lost all ten matches by an average of 20 points.

It took Leinster barely 20 minutes to score four tries, secure maximum points and end the non-event a long way inside the distance. The mis-match caused embarrassment all round, to the winners for their unusual sloppiness, the losers for their collective deficiency and, most of all, to the organisers.

They would have sat and squirmed at the sight of the world’s supposedly supreme club tournament tripping over the grandiosity of its title. The Champions’ Cup suggests a cup for champions when, in reality, it is nothing of the sort.

Montpellier may count cost of holiday deals

The tournament’s credibility still suffers from the occasional French heavyweight turning up in no fit state. Montpellier were beaten before they started at Exeter, arriving without all eight international members of their starting XV against Perpignan the previous week.

Some were injured, others on holiday, including Springbok half-backs Handre Pollard and Cobus Reinach. Holiday?

At the start of a major tournament?

“I have to give them holidays,’’ Montpellier’s director of rugby Philippe Saint-Andre said in compliance with Top14 regulations.

“Other players will be on holiday next week.”

Imagine Liverpool turning up for their next Champions’ League assignment without Mohamed Salah or Manchester City for theirs without Fernandinho because the rules require them to be on holiday. Then imagine the reaction.

Pollard may seem a relative pauper by Premier League standards but the South African is reputed to earn more than €20,000-a-week.

He has started three matches for Montpellier this season and if his employers are not careful they will be out of Europe before he finishes his holiday.

Justice seen to be done for Ulster

As a barrister, Wayne Barnes is better versed than most on justice not merely being done but being seen to be done. The English referee delivered a classic example after initially denying Ulster their match-winning try at Clermont.

Barnes disallowed Nick Timoney’s try in the mistaken belief that the flanker had fumbled Michael Lowry’s outrageous one-handed offload when Clermont full back Cheikh Tiberghien had deliberately knocked the pass forward.

When Barnes called for a video review on whether the try should stand, the TMO, Tom Foley, said: “But you’ve already blown...”

Barnes: “They scored before I blew my whistle, Tom.”

Forensic examination of the video made it look a mighty close call but confirmation of Timoney’s try ensured that he and Ulster got their due reward.

My team of the weekend:

15 Patrick Campbell (Munster)

14 Damian Penaud (Clermont)

13 James Hume (Ulster)

12 Damian De Allende (Munster)

11 Juan Imhoff (Racing)

10 Jack Carty (Connacht)

9 Antoine Dupont (Toulouse)

1 Andrew Porter (Leinster)

2 Scott Buckley (Munster)

3 Tadhg Furlong (Leinster)

4 Jonny Gray (Exeter)

5 Tadhg Beirne (Munster)

6 Peter O’Mahoney (Munster)

7 Nick Timoney (Ulster)

8 Daniel Okeke (Munster)