Le crunch, but no bite
They will have to settle for Trevor Brennan and a Canadian No 8 called Phil Murphy.
Instead of Munster and Leinster slugging it out for provincial glory on a European stage, Toulouse and Perpignan will meet in Dublin next month and the ERC, the organisers of the Heineken Cup, will have to crank up their marketing machine by several notches in the coming weeks if they are to make the eighth final in the competition's history anywhere near a 47,500 sell-out.
After Munster's defeat in Toulouse on Saturday, Perpignan delivered a second hammer blow to Irish rugby and ERC's marketing strategy by knocking out Matt Williams' side in front of their own Dublin fans.
At the final whistle there was a stunned silence among the remaining Leinster fans while the tiny band of 250 Catalan fans among the 37,800 crowd happily began planning a return trip to Lansdowne Road next month.
ERC chief executive Derek McGrath will be praying a few more decide to make the trip but he insisted there was no alternative but to press ahead with the decision, made at the start of the season, to stage the final in Dublin.
"I wouldn't conceive there being a change in the decision just because two French teams have qualified for the final," McGrath said last night.
"The decision was made months ago and rugby in Ireland has never been more popular.
"We expect that for this match the Irish public will respond. We'll be sending out a very strong message to the Leinster and Munster public to come along."
That is a very optimistic spin. Six thousand final tickets were sold within two hours of them going on sale back in February, very few of them presumably being snapped up in southern France.
Not that anyone should blame Perpignan for spoiling the script.
The Catalans were full value for their 21-14 victory yesterday afternoon as they picked off yet another fashionable scalp in the competition.
It was Leinster who fluffed their lines. Matt Williams' side never got going and paid the price for profligate kicking from the boot of Brian O'Meara, poor returns from their normally rock solid lineout and the willingness of the Perpignan pack to wilfully concede free kicks for continually disrupting scrums when Leinster needed and deserved better reward for their inconvenience.
Twice Perpignan were reduced to 14 men as blood-bin replacement flanker Lionel Mallier walked the walk in the first half and hooker Michel Konieckiewicz followed in his footsteps in the second.
Twice, Leinster failed to take advantage of their numerical supremacy.
The first-half had seen more errors committed by Leinster than the rest of the campaign combined.
Scrum-half O'Meara missed four of his five penalty kicks while Perpignan's Manny Edmonds, who would go on to earn man-of-the-match status, missed his side's one goal chance.
The difference would prove costly.
Whether it was anxiety or complacency, Leinster reverted to type with the kind of slow start they thought they had banished when storming out of the blocks in the quarter-final against Biarritz here a fortnight ago.
When they won a third-minute penalty, O'Meara kicked across the face of the posts from wide on the right and he missed a far easier chance just a minute later, this time from just to the left of the posts.
It was not just Leinster's kicker who was making mistakes, though.
Perpignan lost their first lineout of the afternoon in a great position inside Leinster's 22 when Malcolm O'Kelly stole the ball in the seventh minute.
That was quickly followed by a poor kick upfield from Denis Hickie, straight down the throat of Perpignan wing Frederic Cermeno, who promptly knocked on.
It was the 20th minute before the deadlock was broken, when O'Meara slotted his third penalty of the game from just inside the Perpignan half.
Then Mallier was sin-binned and things should have turned Leinster's way. Instead they went backwards.
Hickie rescued the home side in the 29th minute when Cermeno broke the line and kicked ahead.
It was a two-horse race to ground the ball first as it ran under the posts and referee Nigel Williams called for a video verdict, which ruled Hickie had got there first.
Another O'Meara penalty miss brought the half to a close and Leinster, to Perpignan's obvious delight, went in at the interval just 3-0 ahead.
Perpignan had wiped that out within two minutes of the restart when Cermeno sent over a drop goal but O'Meara restored the lead in the 51st minute with a penalty and the tit-for-tat continued when Edmonds slotted a drop goal from just over halfway.
There followed a period of ebb and flow with O'Meara finally getting clean ball out of the back of the scrum and feeding his backline.
Hickie turned on the gas and broke the 22 before off-loading to Gordon D'Arcy, who ran over for a try in the corner a minute after the restart. O'Meara missed the conversion to leave the score at 11-6.
Perpignan lost another player to the sin bin when Konieckiwicz was ordered off but they kept going and after reaching the Leinster line and meeting a brick wall of blue, Edmonds flicked the ball out to Pascal Girodani who kicked to the right corner where Pascal Bomati caught the ball to run in and level the scores.
As O'Driscoll finally succumbed to his first-half injury, Edmonds missed his conversion but the Aussie fly-half finally edged his side in front in the 74th minute with a penalty.
At 14-11, Perpignan turned the screw and sub hooker Marc dal Maso charged over the line with two minutes on the clock.
Edmonds slotted the conversion to open up a 21-11 lead and that was that. Substitute Nathan Spooner fired home an injury-time penalty but it was not nearly enough.
No matter how attractive the fare will be when Perpignan and Toulouse take centre stage in Dublin next month, you have to wonder just how many of the masses who traipsed quietly out of Lansdowne Road yesterday
afternoon will make the return journey on May 24.
It may be Le Crunch but it needs spectators to give it its real bite.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
