Munster mindset v French money

DOUBTING the quality of the players lining out for Toulon in this afternoon’s Heineken Cup game against Munster at Thomond Park would serve no useful purpose.

Even though some very familiar names are missing from the matchday 23, the French are still outstanding exponents of the code, more than half have graced the greatest rugby arenas in the world and are household games just about everywhere.

The names trip off the tongue… Wilkinson, Contepomi, Fernandez Lobbe, Mignoni, Smith, Van Niekerk and so many, many more. Indeed, the Toulon president, Mourad Boudjellal, who has amassed a fortune from the comic strip business, has put together a squad of such eminence that quite a few will start on the bench this afternoon and players of the calibre of the Argentine Juan Fernandez Lobbe and Scotland’s Rory Lamont haven’t even been asked to depart the lovely seaside idyll that is Toulon on the Cote d’Azur.