Dai Young: Irish rugby still in a very good place

European Champions Cup Pool 2

Less than three seasons have passed since three-quarters of the Heineken Cup semi-finalists were sourced from the Pro12.

Come 3pm tomorrow it may be that none of that league’s number have even made it out of the Rugby Champions Cup’s pool stages.

Lose to Wasps today without the salve of a bonus point and Leinster may well find themselves sinking into oblivion.

Glasgow’s margin of error tomorrow is even tighter as an unlikely win against Bath at The Rec might not be enough to earn a berth in the last eight.

It’s a scenario that has prompted debate already and, while England and France have both known their barren patches in Europe this last decade, the dominance of both in the first year of the new competition they railroaded into existence carries worrying overtures.

Dai Young seemed as good a man as any to ask about that this week.

Eight years as coach to the Cardiff Blues, added to the four and counting as Wasps Director of Rugby, have afforded the Welshman a panoramic view of the shifting European landscape from both sides of the Severn Bridge.

His time at Wasps has also highlighted the speed at which rugby can change.

It isn’t that long since the club was spiralling towards financial oblivion. Today, he will watch them reach for a European quarter-final with almost 30,000 others at a state-of-the-art arena.

“The changes in the space of just 15 months have made the club unrecognisable, on and off the pitch,” he says.

“We were written off after losing our first two games but we now know that if we win the last game in front of our own fans we are through to the quarter-finals having topped the group.

“You couldn’t have asked for any more than that. We know the task in front of us.”

His credentials, therefore, are obvious when it comes to assessing the fluid fortunes of the professional game and he doesn’t buy into the doom and gloom scenario envisaged by some for the Irish provinces’ future influence.

“Irish rugby is still in a very good place. They still take some beating though they aren’t as dominant in Europe as they once were, but things evolve and change all the time.

“Irish rugby is too strong and too well-funded and you would think this is only a blip.”

He added: “It’s swings and roundabouts. It’s not so long ago people were saying the same about the Premiership clubs in Europe.

“The tournament was dominated by Irish sides there for a while, but Wales is my big concern.”

He’s right. Any moaning about the provinces’ lot should be framed in the context of the still sinking ship that contains the regions. There was never less than two from the principality in the knockout stages for the first six years of the Heineken Cup.

Young’s Cardiff and Ospreys actually qualified two years in a row as late as the late noughties. And, indeed, the Blues were deprived of a final spot by Leicester Tigers in 2009 only after the tournament’s first and, to date, last penalty shoot-out after extra-time.

Yet, like the Scots, they haven’t had a flag-bearer in the last eight since 2012 and listening to Young’s dissection of the issues at hand wouldn’t motivate anyone to throw their life savings on that changing any time soon.

“When they were challenging (in Europe) there was a lot more money there. There are very few quality overseas signings being made now. We had top-quality guys like Xavier Rush and Ben Blair when I was with Cardiff.

“You had guys like Justin Marshall and Tommy Bowe at Ospreys. The finances are not there to compete at the highest level anymore.”

The health of the Irish entrants will be reassessed when today’s game at the Ricoh Arena is over, but Leinster’s geographic, demographic and financial profile would appear to make them the most likely of those on this side of the Irish Sea to remain competitive at the top level.

Clearly, they still carry some weight around Europe.

“It might be a few years since they won their last Heineken Cup but, as a player, this is the kind of game you really want to play in,” said Wasps and sometime England prop Matt Mullan.

“You don’t win three Heineken Cups by fluke. They lose one guy and they bring in someone else who is just as good. We saw that in the first-round game in Dublin. Mike Ross was out that day as well so that competition is always there with them. You can’t think of them as a team in decline.”