Watch Leinster do a Marseille number on Toulon
That figure is the highest it’s ever been and, according to the DNACG, “confirms the loss-making management of professional rugby”. But in typical French fashion, it just wasn’t mentioned this week. There wasn’t a single conversation over lunch about it.
The angle the French media took missed the point completely. They praised the good boys — Toulon and Brive — as they were the only clubs in the black, as opposed to highlighting the problems of some other clubs.
But the ambivalence towards these figures shows just how mighty the euro is in French rugby. For the wealthy benefactors backing the likes of Racing Metro and Stade Francais, their attitude is just to write a cheque and get on with it. People wonder if the bubble might burst sometime, but these guys have personal portfolios worth somewhere north of €800m, so as long as they want to stay involved, the clubs can keep on bankrolling the world’s best players to come here on ever-increasing salaries.
To that end, with Toulon’s star-studded group going for a third European title in a row, it’s been hard for anyone to give Leinster any chance of winning Sunday’s Champions Cup semi-final in Marseille.
Toulon are 11-point favourites, they did a major job on Matt O’Connor’s side in the quarter-finals last year and Leinster have little form to speak of.
Just as in Ireland, the assumption among rugby people is that Toulon will get the job done.
However, I think Leinster will win.
There are plenty of examples from Munster’s glory years of a team going into the latter stages of the Heineken Cup on a bad run, then pulling out a performance on the day. Similarly, I think there’s going to be a massive reaction from Leinster here, due to the hurt that’s built up during a season when everyone has been knocking players and management.
A team that has a little anger inside them can be very dangerous. The negativity surrounding them this season is mostly based on their lack of form in the Pro12, but you have to look at the amount of their players who are in the national squad. Matt O’Connor has said these guys are only playing about 30% of Leinster’s games, but this is a one-off game with a full squad, who know they under-performed against Bath, and I believe they will surprise people.
Given it looks like they won’t make the top four of the Pro 12, there will be a big desire to pull off something special. Both teams know how to win — they’ve shared the last four European titles — but because of that, Leinster won’t fear Toulon’s winning mentality as much as other teams might.
O’Connor has said the external criticism doesn’t affect what goes on inside the group, and he probably knows he’s being unfairly compared to his predecessors Joe Schmidt and Michael Cheika. They won Heineken Cups with very different personnel who were at their peak— the likes of Brian O’Driscoll, Johnny Sexton, Gordon D’Arcy, Isa Nacewa, Shane Horgan, Rocky Elsom, Nathan Hines and Brad Thorn.
Leinster are bearing the brunt of the criticism because of how they’ve performed in the Pro12 this season, but if they win on Sunday, just watch the mood change. They’ll be all too aware of that themselves.
You can’t read too much into their loss to the Dragons last weekend, given how many of their big guns were missing, but the main thing I took from that game was the potential of Ben Te’o. He showed glimpses of his exceptional ability to transfer the ball, in contact, from one hand to another. He is possessed of excellent footwork and explosiveness. I’m a big rugby league fan and watched a lot of him when he was with the South Sydney Rabbitohs — he could light up Marseille on Sunday.
A crucial issue for me is whether Leigh Halfpenny plays. Munster found out to their cost in last year’s semi-finals how important Wilkinson’s goal-kicking was, and Halfpenny falls into the same bracket. Ian Madigan is not at that level yet and his reliability under pressure will be thoroughly scrutinised in Marseille’s Stade Velodrome. His six from six against Bath augurs well but this is a different level of pressure.
If Halfpenny misses out, it could be Frederic Michalak or Matt Giteau on kicking duty for Toulon. Both are class acts, but they have also missed large chunks of the season due to injury. Giteau makes Toulon tick; he understands the game and has old-school values in terms of how to manage it, but also possesses potent acceleration and the decision-making ability to change a game on his own.
Michalak’s revival has been fascinating. I would have been among those to assume he was a flashy but flaky player, but in the past 18 months he has found consistency that I would not previously associated with him. I know for a fact he is one of the hardest workers in the Toulon squad, and his defence, his kicking from the tee — 9/10 against Grenoble last week — and from the hand have all improved immeasurably. You wonder is it Toulon’s culture, where big-game players seem to get the best out of each other, that is responsible for his transformation.
The other key men whom Leinster will have done a lot of planning for, are Mathieu Bastareaud and Steffon Armitage. Armitage is an unbelievable player who provides a wonderful contrast for Toulon — there’s an awful lot of big, physical men around him, but with his 5’9” frame and posture, he has the ability to make himself an unmovable object at ruck time.
Dominic Ryan is likely to be on the bench for Leinster on Sunday — I feel he could be a proper impact player if he gets game time — this week, though, in training he will have been in a red bib, playing the Armitage role, while Seán O’Brien and the rest of the Leinster back row look to destroy him at every ruck. Armitage is hugely effective there, but if he has three or four fellas all over him at every ruck, it becomes a lot harder.
The risk with that kind of strategy is that it creates space for others to take over his role, but there’s nobody as good as him in the Toulon side at performing that role of disrupting opposition ball.
Armitage has extra motivation in that he will want to prove to the England boss Stuart Lancaster that he should be selected for the World Cup. There’s no way he and Clermont full-back Nick Abendanon aren’t among the best 30 players in England, but they can’t be picked because they’ve chosen to play in France.
It’s the same for Giteau and Drew Mitchell; there are a lot of whispers that Australia may also include foreign-based players in their World Cup squad if Michael Cheika gets his way, so they will want to put themselves in the shop window too. Selectors can have short memories, and timing is everything.
It’s the same for Leinster, whose time to pull out a performance that really matters has now come.
