Irish rugby facing more Marseille misery

Irish attempts to reclaim the country’s place at the summit of European club rugby next season look like becoming even more difficult if the news from France that Marseille is being lined up to host the 2016 Champions Cup final rings true.

Leinster lost to Toulon at the Stade Velodrome in the Mediterranean port city on Sunday, 12 months after Munster suffered a similar fate there at the hands of the same opponents. Contesting a final there would be an even greater task.

The provinces have featured in eight finals since the inception of the Heineken Cup and, in a quirky twist of fate, none of those were played on the continent. Lansdowne Road, the Millennium Stadium, Murrayfield and Twickenham have instead hosted Ulster, Munster and Leinster in the past.

The result was either a ‘home’ final or one where Irish fans at the very least cancelled out their counterparts, so a prospective trip to the Cote d’Azur in the event that one or more of them made it that far would represent the greatest challenge in the provinces’ combined histories.

French rugby president Pierre Camou has signed and sent a letter of intent to EPCR (European Professional Club Rugby), according to Midi Olympique, with a proposal that both the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup games be held in the 67,000 capacity Stade Velodrome.

This would be a break with the current norm as the Challenge Cup has in recent seasons been held in smaller venues near to the main ground. This year, for example, will see The Stoop host the smaller of the finals while Twickenham hosts the main event.

It is understood that the French preference was for Stade de France to play host in 2016, but the delay to the European tournaments caused by the approaching Rugby World Cup means that the finals will be played on the later weekend of 13/14 May.

Paris’s Stade Jean Bouin is already down to host a Sevens World Series event that weekend, which is why Marseille has been put forward, though agreement still needs to be reached with Uefa who are due to assume control of Stade Velodrome by then for the Euro 2016 finals that start on June 10.

Acceptance is also being sought that Olympique Marseille will not play a match in their home ground on that weekend. A decision by EPCR, which did not confirm or deny any list of potential candidates yesterday, may come prior to this year’s final, though a summer announcement is more likely.

A Marseille final in 13 months’ time would certainly confirm France’s position as European club rugby’s reigning superpower, something that was stated confidently on the front page headline in Midi Olympique which read simply as: ‘Kings Of Europe’.

With Clermont Auvergne accounting for Saracens in St Etienne on Saturday, there will now be an all-French final for the second time in three years as Toulon and the men from Montferrand reprise their 2013 get-together at the Aviva Stadium.

Léo Faure wrote a piece headlined, ‘Le Leinster est éternal’ detailing the loss of so many big players since their last title in 2012, their struggles in the Pro12 and how they played a simple game based on territory, defence and winning kickable penalties in Marseille.

He paid homage to the collective strength of the Irish team in such times of adversity and finished off by stating that Leinster are still alive and always ambitious after a game summed up as ‘100 asphyxiating minutes’.

L’Equipe was far less impressed. One sub-heading described Leinster as ‘minimaliste’ and the piece discussed how Matt O’Connor, stung by last year’s quarter-final loss in Toulon when they fell away in a more open encounter after half-time, responded by utilising a game plan that sought to do little else but restrict Toulon.

Arnaud Requenna was critical of the approach, describing it as a “bankrupt operation”.

“The Australian chose a radically different game plan: one summarised as ‘we’ll do nothing, make nothing of nothing, but tighten the screw on Toulon’.”

Meanwhile, Leinster’s achievement in reaching the last four banked an extra €300,000 for the IRFU as the union takes receipt of all monies dispersed by EPCR, though this figure is down €150,000 on the payout for Munster’s semi-final loss 12 months ago.

The reason for that is simply the adoption of a different funding model under the new European club organisation and one where there is now a more even spread among all the qualifiers for the main European Champions Cup.