Breaking French resistance

IT COULD hardly be the case that Perpignan have gone soft all of a sudden! The French champions are renowned as the hard men of their national championship and the team so tough to conquer at their own Stade Aime Giral that they have won 27 of their last 29 matches at the venue.

Their supporters are equally renowned as among the most fanatical, noisy and downright hostile in the rugby world.

And yet Perpignan felt the need this week to post a request on their website appealing to the fans to give Munster and the referee Dave Pearson a fair deal in tomorrow’s Heineken Cup match while getting 100% behind their own team.

It’s a worthy ideal but whether the Catalans can live up to it is another matter altogether.

Either way, Paul O’Connell and his Munster players won’t be holding their breath. Intimidating is the adjective we have heard more than any other throughout the past week and regardless of Perpignan’s good intentions, that’s just how it will be in the cauldron that is sure to be their 14,500-capacity stadium.

Tony McGahan yesterday decided to keep faith with the Lifeimi Mafi-Keith Earls centre axis, meaning that Springbok Jean De Villiers will again start on the bench in an unchanged line-up. He also continues with the same 6-2 divide in favour of backs over forwards in the replacement panel.

Contrastingly, the Australian’s Perpignan counterpart Bernard Goutta makes five changes in his starting line-up. Philip Burger, scorer of the dramatic second-half try last week, takes over from Jerome Porical at full-back. David Mele displaces Nicolas Durand at scrum-half; Jerome Schuster and Marius Tincu come into the front-row for Perry Freshwater and Guilheim Guirado, while fit-again Ovidiu Tonita is preferred to Yannick Parent in the back-row.

However, the relegated five have all been accommodated on the bench, ready to be called upon as Goutta sees fit.

One only needs to cast a summary glance over Perpignan’s home record over the past few years to understand the massive challenge facing Munster. They have lost just two of their 29 Heineken Cup matches at the Stade since 1998 and have enjoyed a 16-game unbeaten run since 1998. Their only conquerors were Leicester in 2001 and Wasps in 2004 and significantly both sides went on to capture the trophy.

But records are made to be broken and if any side can lower the Catalans’ colours, it is surely Munster, who have demonstrated on several occasions that this kind of challenge brings the best out of them.

At least, that was the case through the latter end of the 1990s and for much of the new century but it remains to be seen if the current squad retains the level of quality and fortitude to maintain that run.

To have any hope of a positive result, Munster must eradicate the errors that riddled their game last week and contributed to all three French tries while also maintaining the high level of discipline that saw them concede only five penalties against 17 by the opposition.

McGahan is agreed on both points, while also broadening out the game plan.

“We believe that we created a number of opportunities that we could have taken more advantage of,” he says. “And we also thought that if we worked a little harder on our realignment, we could have given ourselves a lot more chances. They would be two areas of our attack that we can take forward and pose some problems for Perpignan.”

He accepts that the French are sure to up the tempo in front of their home fans this week although the close study they have made of most of Perpignan’s matches suggests that their approach won’t differ a whole lot from what we saw last week.

“We felt that what they produced on Friday was pretty close to what they have done all season,” he mused. “We certainly expect an increase in their emotion and in their physicality being at home and what that brings to them at their home ground. So those coupled with their game plan make them a very good side.”

But it all makes for a potentially riveting game, with McGahan enthusing that “we don’t experience anything like that back in Australia, New Zealand or South Africa in terms of tribal support in really confined grounds with knowledgeable supporters. We’re lucky enough in that we have a number of players who have been in this situation a number of times.”

One of those he refers to is, of course, Ronan O’Gara who kept Munster in last week’s game with his deadly accurate place kicking and his astute use of possession. He will again have a massive role to play and his well-proven capacity to cope with the big-match occasion will be severely tested once again. For sure, though, there are few better people than Rog and the many other seasoned campaigners in this Munster team to make the crowd’s hostility work to their advantage.

Most would settle for the kind of bonus point earned at Clermont Auvergne last year that proved so vital in qualifying for the knockout stages.

And even that might be a lot to ask for given the team’s inconsistent performances over the season so far and Perpignan’s near invincibility on their home patch.

It certainly is the kind of game that will reveal the true merit of Munster.