Parra’s perfect double – Clermont win to knock champs out

Clermont Auvergne travel to Dublin on a three-pronged mission later this week.

Win at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday afternoon and not only will they plant one foot in the knockout stages for the third time in four years, they will all but consign Leinster to a pool stage exit for the first time in six seasons.

“If we can achieve that feat, to take them out of the race, it will be a good thing,” said France scrum-half Morgan Parra, “but we will be champions of nothing. There will still be many teams to beat.”

It would be difficult to overstate the carrot on offer to the Top 14 side as they make for Dublin given that Leinster have consistently frustrated their European ambitions, most recently last May when they saw off Les Jaunards in the semi-final and ruined the club’s centenary year.

The third motivator firing Vern Cotter’s side this week stems from yet another reversal at Leinster’s hands. Two years ago, they let the reigning champions hit their stride early on in the only previous meeting between the two on Lansdowne Road and never recovered. Those lessons have been learned.

“We have already had the opportunity to live through this back-to-back confrontation,” said Parra. “After we conceded the losing bonus point at the Stade Marcel Michelin [in 2010], we went to Dublin with good intentions before exploding.”

Cotter has touched on the same memories this week but this is not a like-for-like repeat despite the fact that Clermont again coughed up a losing bonus point to the Irish province in the first meeting last Sunday.

Clermont were just one point better off than Leinster when they came to the Irish capital this time two years ago thanks, in the main, to a round two defeat in Montpellier. This time they have a five-point buffer and they intend squeezing it for all it is worth.

“The pressure is on them, more than two years ago, and the longer we can put pressure on them, hold them out and outwit them, the more chance we have of getting a result in the end,” said flanker Julien Bonnaire.

“To do this we must be efficient in the contact areas and be aggressive in defence.

“If we manage to be offensive they will have less time to organise themselves and make the right decisions. Then the minutes will pass and the pressure on them will build.”

Much has been made of Clermont’s abilities, their financial muscle and strength in depth, but Leinster showed again last week why they have become so hard to beat and the mutual respect between the two is obvious.

Cotter has warned Leinster will be better this week than last and the Clermont coach has pinpointed the opening half-hour and final quarter — when the toll of two games in six days begins to take hold — as the keys to a game on which so much rests.

“We have been promised hell,” said flanker Alexandre Lapandy, who was named man of the match last weekend. “I hope that, contrary to what people think, we will not spend all of our time defending because if we do, that will be a bad sign.”