Why can’t Wales crack the Heineken Cup?
IN the wake of a third Six Nations Grand Slam in seven years you could forgive the Welsh if they paid little heed to what is going on over on this side of the Irish Sea.
Yet as Cardiff Blues arrive in Dublin this weekend to face Leinster in the Heineken Cup quarter-finals there may well be more than a little jealousy back in the Valleys at the levels of success Irish provinces are enjoying in the greatest club competition European rugby has to offer.
While Ireland is supplying three provinces to the last eight in the bid to secure a fifth Heineken Cup trophy in seven seasons, Cardiff will be alone in flying the Wales flag.
There were no Welsh regions at all in last season’s knockout stages, the Blues were the last of them to reach a semi-final back in 2009 and you have to go back to the pre-region days of the competition’s inaugural year for a glimpse of a finalist, when Cardiff, the club, went down in their own Arms Park to Toulouse after extra-time.
There have been regular instalments of both heartache and under-achievement since, with Wales supplying even a semi-finalist only five times since that first 1996 decider as Welsh rugby first struggled to adapt to the professional game by merging clubs into regions in a move that still causes resentment and is seemingly still under review.
Cardiff’s early run at the Heineken Cup gave way to Llanelli and its later incarnation, the Scarlets, before the Ospreys and their infamous collection of ‘Galacticos’ sought a return for their investments and came up short in three successive quarter-finals between 2008 and 2010, of which the middle year coincided with Cardiff’s agonising penalty shoot-out semi-final loss to Leicester Tigers at the Millennium Stadium.
With a quarter-final against champions Leinster at a sold-out Aviva Stadium tomorrow, the Blues appear to be facing another uphill struggle to keep alive hopes of emulating their club predecessors of 16 seasons ago. Blues flanker Sam Warburton, though, has been bullish about bucking the trend all season, and well before he led Wales to the Grand Slam last month.
“You do wonder why someone hasn’t reached the Heineken Cup final since the opening year of the competition,” Warburton said last December. “For one reason or another it hasn’t worked out for the Welsh regions. Hopefully, this will be the year. We just have to make sure we put performances in at the right time. I don’t think any of the regions are too far off; if they play to potential, they are capable of getting to the final.”
That was at a time when Cardiff, Ospreys and the Scarlets were earning plaudits, having each won their opening two pool games, continuing the feelgood factor in Welsh rugby after national team head coach Warren Gatland had guided Warburton and company to the World Cup semi-finals.
“People were on about the momentum the World Cup players might bring back to the regions,” Warburton said ahead of round three of the pool games. “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I didn’t think it would have a knock-on effect, but looking at the results, it seems it has a little bit.”
Not for much longer. Scarlets’ momentum was halted with home and away defeats by Munster before Northampton landed a killer blow in round five to avenge the home defeat they suffered in round two. And Ospreys, the team that carried Welsh hopes with their all-star line-ups at the end of the last decade, also hit the buffers, yet again failing to transfer their undoubted qualities into European success as they fell behind Saracens and Biarritz in Pool 5.
Can the subsequent Grand Slam kick-start a Welsh resurgence in the knockout stages? It did not happen in the previous Slam years 2005, when none of the regions even reached the knockout stages, and 2008 and this time around it solely down to Cardiff Blues.
There is also a fresh turmoil undermining their chances, and this time it has nothing to do with Gavin Henson’s mid-air ice cube-throwing antics.
Wales is currently witnessing an exodus of top players from its regions ahead of a new salary cap to be placed upon them by the WRU next season.
Welsh Test stars and expensive imports alike are exiting the country in their droves, many of them following James Hook, Mike Phillips and Lee Byrne to the lucrative French Top 14.
That trio left Ospreys to join Perpignan, Bayonne and Clermont Auvergne respectively at the end of last season and since then hooker Huw Bennett has announced he is leaving to join Lyon next season, Tommy Bowe is returning to his native Ulster, Scotland wing Nikki Walker is off to Worcester and flanker Tom Smith will join London Irish. The Newport Gwent Dragons will lose Luke Charteris and Aled Brew to France this summer while in Cardiff, this weekend’s quarter-final may be viewed as the Blues’ last big push for glory for some time with Gethin Jenkins (Toulon), Casey Laulala (Munster), Dan Parks (Connacht), Rhys Thomas (Wasps), Richie Rees (London Irish) and John Yapp (Edinburgh) all set to depart the Welsh capital at the end of the season.
Bowe’s explanation of his desire to return to Ulster after four seasons at Ospreys perhaps pertains to all of the players about to leave.
“One of my big issues was that in my playing career I’ve never really felt part of a settled squad,” Bowe said.
“When I went to the Ospreys they were going extremely well under Lyn Jones. They thrashed Saracens in the LV semi-final, went on and beat Leicester in the final and should have beaten Saracens in the quarter-final of the Heineken Cup.
“They were really booming and all of a sudden Lyn got dropped and a new coaching structure came in. It’s kind of been a little bit all over the place and it was the same at Ulster whenever I was there.
“Building and development is a buzzword in the Ospreys, no doubt. You only have to look at the young players they have got coming through.
“I suppose the likes of James Hook and these guys were coming through a few years ago but unfortunately Hooky has now moved on and it is time for the new breed to come through and try and take the reins there.
“I think they will be a very successful team if they get everything right there and I think Steve Tandy will be a good coach, he is in touch with a lot of the young fellas and he has some great ideas. But you have a few older fellas there as well who are probably thinking ‘development is maybe not what I am about and I want to win things now’.”
And the message is clear. Players are voting with their feet because winning Heineken Cups is not going to happen in Wales anytime soon.
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