Peter Jackson: Magnitude of Leinster win makes a mockery of Champions Cup
16 January 2022; Rhys Ruddock of Leinster competes for a high ball against Florian Vergaeghe of Montpellier Hérault during the Heineken Champions Cup Pool A match between Leinster and Montpellier Hérault at RDS Arena in Dublin. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
They keep saying ad nauseum that there is nothing to touch the Champions’ Cup, the best club competition in the rugby world bar none. Try telling that to those who spent their Sunday lunchtime watching what happens when one champion team makes mincemeat of another.
Yet the same cheerleaders, most stridently those with a vested interest in its projection as a ‘fantastic’ competition, point to its high-octane mixture of ferocity and velocity. And when a French team appears in Dublin with even less resistance than England’s batsmen in Australia, the knee-jerk reaction is to gloss it over and move on.
The magnitude of the home win made a mockery of any competition, let alone one with such a grandiose title: Leinster 89, Montpellier 7. The four-time European champions helped themselves to 13 tries at the rate of one every six minutes, six before half-time, seven afterwards.
A mis-match on an embarrassing scale moved Benjamin Kayser, ex-France hooker now firmly established in the Premier League of perceptive pundits, said: "This is really painful. I don’t think they are interested any more."
It could be argued that they were never interested in the first place, other than getting the fixture out of the way, as if they had lost more than the match after shipping six tries at Exeter before Christmas.
In making a strong case for referees being empowered to end such punishment by stopping the match inside the distance, Montpellier, winners of Europe’s secondary tournament last season, blamed Covid.
Admittedly, they have been hit hard but then so have Munster, Cardiff and Scarlets. The French club, irony of ironies, had been awarded a five-point home win from the home leg, much to Leinster’s consternation.
The ravages of the pandemic hardly justified the opposition turning up with 15 changes from their last domestic match. Wholesale changes by Castres against Munster on Friday night and Stade Francais at Bristol 24 hours later left no doubt that the Top 14 matters a whole lot more than Europe.
While the weekend did produce some edge-of-the-seat duels, notably Connacht- Leicester and Cardiff-Harlequins, there were other non-events, if not quite on the scale of the one staged at the RDS.
Bath only became competitive in the fog at La Rochelle after Ronan O’Gara’s impressive team had rolled them into bonus-point submission within an hour.
Glasgow suffered an even worse fate in Devon where they led 17-14 only to fall apart in the last half hour, shipping six tries and 38 points in 25 minutes.
Scotland’s only hope will be counted out unless they overcome La Rochelle at Scotstoun on Saturday night. All three Welsh contenders have already suffered what’s long been a perennial fate, not without credit in Cardiff’s case for their courage in the grip of Covid.
A tournament which has kept going against the odds has produced seven qualifiers for the Round of 16: three English (Harlequins, Leicester, Bristol), two French (Racing, La Rochelle), two Irish (Munster, Ulster).
Leinster will join them by winning Saturday’s tie at The Rec where Bath have already conceded 200 points in six matches this season. Securing home advantage in the knock-out stage will almost certainly require all five points to keep their noses in front of Exeter who finish up in Montpellier against the soft touches. Connacht will complete a clean sweep for all four Irish provinces provided they dispose of Stade Francais in Paris on Sunday.
Harry Randall, born in England and reared in a rural corner of Welsh-speaking Wales, struck a mighty blow on Saturday night for a long-endangered species, the flyweight scrum-half. In doing so, he demanded the chance to strike a mightier blow, for England at Murrayfield early next month.
The Six Nations has not seen anyone quite like Randall since Ireland picked a sprite of a scrum-half from Cork 22 years ago. Peter Stringer will see a lot of his former self in the cheeky little chappie who gave Stade Francais a serious run- around in Bristol.
Stringer, 5ft 7½ inches tall, tipped the scales at 11st 5lbs in his pomp and almost certainly still does. Randall is the same height and virtually the same weight, one pound heavier than Stringer according to his England biog, one pound lighter according to the Bears. Those of us who have long despaired at the pulverising effect of muscle-bound goliaths on smaller, lighter opponents will have cheered Randall’s speed of thought and dazzling movement to the rafters.
Not content with scoring a solo try and making at least one more, how about his piece de resistance – stripping the ball from an opponent twice his size, South African lock Johan van der Mescht.
What Randall dared to do to the Pink Panthers of Paris, another of the comparative lightweights did to Northampton on Ulster’s behalf less than 24 hours later. Michael Lowry, no taller than Randall and only a kilogram or so heavier, played like a Colossus, lording it over Franklin’s Gardens as though he owned the place.
Making the Old Timers’ first-team is no mean feat these days. It could be said that Europe is such a fit place for those of a certain vintage, so much so that Johnny Sexton fails to make the cut.
For once, Ireland’s venerable captain finds himself in the unusual position of not being deemed old enough to justify selection at the expense of the most evergreen of his contemporaries.
Jimmy Gopperth, Leinster’s No. 10 during Sexton’s two-season stint in Paris, is still going strong at 38, so strong that his six goals for Wasps proved decisive in sending holders Toulouse packing from Coventry in a pointless state. The durable New Zealander is not quite the oldest of the oldies despite turning 39 at the end of the season.
Richard Wigglesworth will beat him to it by a matter of days. Twenty years after beginning at Sale, the most senior of England’s bygone scrum halves started for Leicester in Galway on Saturday. Given the Tigers’ propensity to scrap their way out of tight corners, who’s to say he won’t go all the way to the final in Marseilles, a week or so before reaching 39.
Mike Brown (Newcastle, 36); Maxime Medard (Toulouse, 35), Rey Lee-lo (Cardiff, 35), Ian Whitten (Exeter, 34), Keith Earls (Munster, 34): Jimmy Gopperth (Wasps, 38), Richard Wigglesworth (Leicester, 38):
Cian Healy (Leinster, 34), Augustin Creevy (London Irish, 36), John Afoa (Bristol, 38): Loic Jacquet (Castres, 34), Aaron Shingler (Scarlets, 34): Sergio Parisse (Toulon, 38), Steffon Armitage (Biarritz, 36), Duane Vermeulen (Ulster, 35).
Bundee Aki’s post-match rant at Mathieu Raynal over the French official’s confirmation of Leicester’s winning try provided another disturbing example of rugby putting a figurative boot into the game’s cherished values.
No amount of anger over a hairline decision costing his team a priceless win can excuse the Connacht Lion for flouting a commandment as ancient as the sport itself, the one that says: ‘Thou shalt not disrespect the referee.’
To his credit, Aki didn’t waste much time issuing an apology via social media for actions ‘absolutely not needed in this game.’ There could be no denying his contrition, that the defeat had nothing to do with the officials and everything to do with Connacht’s failure to prevent Hosea Saumaki’s corner try.
Michael Lowry (Ulster)
Robert Baloucoune (Ulster)
Damian Penaud (Clermont)
Jonathan Danty (La Rochelle)
Kini Murimurivalu (Leicester)
Marcus Smith (Harlequins)
Harry Randall (Bristol)
Ben Moon (Exeter)
Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter)
Joe Heyes (Leicester)
Kevin Treadwell (Ulster)
Remi Picquette (La Rochelle)
Jasper Wiese (Leicester)
Josh van der Flier (Leinster)
Gavin Coombes (Munster)
