Stand up and fight

THIS is the day when the 16th man will REALLY make his presence felt!

Line up the players available to Patrice Lagisquet and Declan Kidney at the Millennium Stadium this afternoon and the neutral would have to concede the advantage to the Basques. Biarritz are laden with class and experience fore and aft, while there are areas of the Munster side, especially behind the scrum, where shortcomings may well be exposed.

However, there’s a lot more to winning than sheer ability. You must also take into account elements such as desire, commitment, will to win and the hunger of the underdog that has twice before been foiled at the final hurdle.

Then throw in the 16th man, the 50,000 members of the Red Army who will shout themselves hoarse and simply refuse to allow their heroes to leave the stadium without the Holy Grail that is the Heineken Cup. Biarritz may think they know what kind of atmosphere awaits them in the Millennium Stadium, but they really haven’t a clue.

Sale thought they’d cope in Thomond Park in January. They were quiet boys going home that night and wondered just what had hit them. Leinster believed they had a home semi-final at Lansdowne Road. Boy, did they and their fans discover otherwise! Okay, so the final is on ‘neutral’ territory, Cardiff, the hotbed of Welsh rugby with ticket allocation equally distributed between the two sides. You must be joking! Munster followers probably bought as many tickets in Biarritz as the supporters of their own side. Chances are that 50,000 Munster men and women will have a more or less free run in belting out the Fields and Stand Up and Fight and history has shown the kind of effect that can have on Anthony Foley’s side.

“Our supporters are part of the team,” points out Donncha O’Callaghan. “They know when to get behind a team, they know when you need a lift and when to increase the volume.”

Foley himself has twice experienced the pain of final defeat. He’s intent on ensuring it doesn’t happen a third time: “It’s no fun waking up after you’ve lost a final. It’s a big motivating factor for us. We’ve often spoken about how the fear of losing has driven us on at Thomond Park. We weren’t used to the noise levels the first time we played at the Millennium Stadium. The roof was closed and it was pretty claustrophobic. It’s nice to have that experience behind us and to know most of the noise is being created on our behalf.”

The Munster fans truly do have the influence of a 16th man in every big match and I believe that will help to sway the issue in their side’s favour after another knee-knocking, edge-of-the-seat encounter. It may be argued that genuine stars of the game like Dimitri Yachvili, Nicolas Brusque, Jerome Thion, Serge Betsen and Thomas Lievremont are unlikely to be intimidated in any way but, as a whole, Biarritz will find themselves in a cauldron with which they are unfamiliar.

Not that anyone, least of all Declan Kidney and his players, are underestimating the challenge that lies ahead. After all, when they last met in San Sebastian last season, they won with a little to spare. The purists have been telling us how important it is for Biarritz to play the type of flowing game of which men like Damien Traille, Brusque, Sereli Bobo are eminently capable and capitalise on a fluent service from Imanol Harinordoquy and Thion at the line-out and Benoit August and David Couzinet in the set pieces. Their facility in this area is not lost on Paul O’Connell.

“What impresses me about them is that Biarritz can play both games,” says the star Munster second-row. “In some games, it is necessary to play it all up front — and they can do that. In other games, they’ve let it out wide. They can play the percentage game and that makes them very dangerous.”

All too true. Yet, don’t run away with the idea that this Biarritz team is one of all the talents. Bobo, the big and swift Fijian winger, may be a dangerous attacker but is also a vulnerable defender. He isn’t the quickest on the turn and there’s nobody better able to capitalise on that than Ronan O’Gara whose tactical kicking expertise seems to find its expression most on days such as this. There are other key areas where Munster can attack, the line-out being the most obvious.

The return of Marcus Horan, the fitness of John Kelly, are other good reasons for optimism. Expect a refreshed Paul O’Connell to produce another storming performance, Foley to lead by example and to perform better than even this mighty warrior has done in the past.

There’s no reason why David Wallace and Denis Leamy should fear Betsen and his friends and if there is an understandable fear that the scrum could creak at times, it has invariably settled down to hold its own against allcomers. Biarritz may have Yachvili at number nine but even he will struggle to put one over on Peter Stringer, while O’Gara’s experience and brilliant reading of the game can give Munster a crucial edge in the key out-half battle against Julien Peyrelongue.

It will be fascinating to see how Biarritz tackle the game tactically. They clearly have the class to do a job on any team if they used the skills of Traille, Brusque, Philippe Bidabe and Bobo in a positive manner. But that hasn’t been their way in recent times when they have taken a battering ram approach to see off Bath and Sale.

In contrast, O’Connell has stated clearly that Munster won’t depart from the tried and trusted. They are bringing with them to the Millennium Stadium a well prepared plan of action that has stood to them so well over the years. It may have failed at the final fence in 2000 and 2002. That won’t happen this time, simply because the 16th man won’t allow it to happen!