Bath making money work
With more than 40,000 people set to pitch up to Ballsbridge to see the three-time champions start as favourites, this is a game framed by familiar trappings, and yet the wider picture speaks volumes for how the ground has shifted underneath.
Leinster are the only Irish, and indeed Pro12, representative left standing at the first knockout stage. The other three quarter-finals will all be played on French soil with English sides making up the visiting brigades for the full quartet of fixtures.
The sense is of a Leinster side swimming against a tide whipped up on both sides of the English Channel and Matt O’Connor’s players face a formidable task to even reach the final.
Bath, for example, are backed by Bruce Craig, a man whose personal fortune was estimated in The Sunday Times Rich List not long ago at £300m. “This season has to be delivery time,” he told The Daily Telegraph back in September.
Whatever transpires in D4 this afternoon, the West Country side are here to stay. So, too, are Toulon whom Leinster will more than likely have to face in Marseille if they reach the semi-final.
The exact size of Mourad Boudjellal’s fortune is less quantifiable, but the Toulon owner is a multi-millionaire whose deep pockets have funded a conveyor belt of superstars since Tana Umaga’s arrival in 2006.
Boudjellal’s money has obviously been key to the team’s success, but the key has been the ability to glue countless galacticos into a collective rather than a collection of individuals.
Talk to any Leinster player this past 10 years and that same ethos permeates their story. The culture of a club is everything and Stuart Hooper references it straight up when asked what it is that has allowed Bath to prosper.
“There’s been huge changes,” says the club captain. “Not just to the facilities, but to the coaching staff and playing squad as well. But the really important thing that tends to get lost is the hard work we do every day. We work hard and we work smart.
“The players have taken much more ownership in what we do. With that comes greater expectation on yourselves. You ask what you have to do to make things happen.
“How do you make sure you don’t make the same mistakes again? That’s a much more powerful message when it comes from the players rather than the coaches. Then there’s the quality of player. That has gone up too.”
That it has. The signing of Sam Burgess from rugby league has been the one arrival to catch everyone’s attention, but the arrival of younger, less heralded talent has widened the talent base.
“They restructured a lot of their stuff, changed the staff, recruited very heavily and probably have got the most talented young English squad in the Premiership, by some distance,” said O’Connor who knows Bath well from his days at Leicester.
“They have done very well in relation to getting a few boys across from London Irish because they had good ties with the academy there. They are building nicely. They are a good side.”
O’Connor make particular mention of a pack that has been around for a long time and it is a point worth noting, given the understandable excitement surrounding an exciting back line, orchestrated by George Ford at out-half.
Hooper has been a Bath fan all his life. He attended games at The Rec as a kid when the club was in the midst of its glory era and talents such as Jeremy Guscott and Stuart Barnes played with dash and daring.
Hooper loved all that, but was drawn more, even then, to the work done by the warhorses: to men like the future England coach Andy Robinson, who made up for a lack of size with a ferocious capacity to grind a game out.
That is an approach and a culture that cash can’t buy.
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