Peter Jackson: Bloodied English out for the count
There hasn’t been a result like it since Lansdowne Road on St Valentine’s Day in 1903, an occasion made truly historic by a try from a Tipperary farmer, Michael Ryan.
When push came to shove on a rainy Sunday evening in Tigerville, Peter O’Mahony’s Munster weathered nothing worse than the odd squall in leaving England’s biggest club spread-eagled over the ropes and out for the count. How appropriate that Munster should apply the finishing touch in emulating what one of their long-gone props helped achieve more than a century earlier.
Given their cricket team’s impending capitulation in Australia, the collective six-hitting of England’s leading clubs by Ireland’s three provinces over the last two weekends had an Ashes ring to it.
The cumulative score underlines the scale of the outpointing: 167-80. Ulster put Harlequins out of their misery by a two-leg margin of 69-29, Leinster accounted for Exeter 40-25 and Munster outsmarted Leicester 58-26.
Of the three, only Leinster rode their luck, coming from 3-17 behind to complete a recovery which would surely have been beyond them had Cian Healy been given the early red card he deserved. It says much for the triple former champions and the priceless ability of the ageless Isa Nacewa to avert any crisis on the hoof that they still found a winning exit.
Barring something untoward, Leinster and Munster will be rewarded with home ties in the last eight. Ulster know that a home win over La Rochelle in the next round will go a long way towards ensuring they, too, make the quarter-finals.
Of England’s seven starters, only three are clinging to any realistic hope of going that far. While Bath and Wasps gave themselves a stay of execution with home wins over powerful French opposition, Clermont’s double over Saracens leaves the holders contemplating the unthinkable.
Healy was primarily responsible for Connacht sailing towards a home quarter-final in the Challenge Cup. His quartet of tries against Brive ensured that another weekend in Galway came gift-wrapped with another record.
By the time the sums had been added up and the numbers crunched, Healy may be surprised to learn he did a bit more than set an individual record for Connacht. He stands this morning on top of a very large pile, as the first player to score four tries in a European tie for any of the Irish provinces.
He is not the first Irishman to do so. Tommy Bowe achieved that distinction against Treviso eight years ago, not for Ulster but Ospreys.
Jose Mourinho would have made a song and dance about it had, heaven forbid, he been running the Exeter Chiefs instead of Rob Baxter. Referee Pascal Gauzere’s failure to give Cian Healy the right colour of card during the opening quarter of a monumental duel against Leinster would have enraged the far from Special One.
One miserable losing point having amounted to scant reward for taking Europe’s perennial contenders the full distance, Baxter could have claimed that had justice been done, Leinster would have played three-quarters of the match without their Test loosehead.
Instead of bemoaning Gauzere’s refusal to give him a red for a forearm smash aimed at Luke Cowan-Dickie’s jaw, Baxter spoke instead of the “international quality” of the occasion. A class act.
Rarely, if ever, can the Champions’ Cup have gone into a New Year with a thumping list of heavyweight duels on the same card. The next round features more scraps of winner-take-all potential than Don King could ever have assembled.
The net outcome will go down in history should the reinvigorated Ospreys account for Saracens, in which event Swansea will bring the double champions’ reign over Europe to a premature end. Ulster-La Rochelle, Exeter-Montpellier, Racing-Munster and Bath-Scarlets will go a long towards determining who makes the cut for the last eight and who doesn’t.
What’s not...
Sooner or later, the organisers will have to come to their senses and tackle the thorny subject of Italy’s presence in the Champions Cup, a misnomer if ever there was one. That a team like Benetton Treviso can qualify for such a grandiosely titled event from the murky depths of the PRO14 ought to be an open-and-shut case for the Trades Description people. It isn’t just that they have lost 21 of their last 22 ties, the vast majority by four or more tries. It gives those lucky enough to have been drawn in the same pool as the sole Italian qualifier a double shot at making the last eight. Running into the softest of touches increases the prospect of two teams reaching the quarter-finals from the same pool.
Scarlets’ mandatory 10-out-of-10 against Treviso gives the PRO14 champions a fighting chance of joining Bath or Toulon in the knockout stage. Only the best three runners-up get that far and over the last four seasons one of them has never failed to emerge from swimming in the same pool as the under-powered Italians. Toulouse did so last year at Zebre’s expense, as Stade Francais did in 2016, Leicester in 2015 and Northampton in 2014, all beneficiaries of 10 points against Treviso.
The first aerial duel between Clermont and Saracens brought Isaiah Toeva crashing to the ground, the victim of a tip-tackle from Sean Maitland. Strangely, the Scotland wing escaped the supposed obligatory yellow card and the holders escaped with nothing more than a penalty. In the final quarter, Clermont substitute Nick Abendanon committed a similar foul in flying pursuit of a restart. The referee, Ireland’s Andrew Brace, referred it to the TMO, his compatriot Simon McDowell.
After seeing it on the big screen, Brace, referring to the Maitland incident, said: “It’s just the same as the first half. Just a timing issue.”
McDowell clearly disagreed. “23 black (Abendanon) is not in a realistic position to challenge for the ball.”
Brace: “You recommend a penalty and a yellow?”
The question begged another one. Why had the same officials not arrived at the same conclusion after studying Maitland’s challenge on Toeava? Abendanon looked suitably aggrieved even if, figuratively speaking, the exiled Englishman didn’t have a leg to stand on.
The inconsistency provoked howls of protest from Les Jaunards. They would have been howling all the louder at the end had Scott Spedding’s long-range missile not won it for the Michelin Men three minutes from time.
The weekend left another trail of destruction in its wake, hardly surprising given that the rarest of breeds, those who seemed immune to human frailty as headed by a trio of Test No. 8s, have all fallen by the wayside.
After hardly missing more than the odd match season in, season out for Leinster, Ireland and the Lions, Jamie Heaslip is still to reappear for the first time since March following two back operations.
Taulupe Faletau, the nearest Welsh equivalent in terms of indestructibility, will miss the next four months and Kieran Read, ever-present in the middle of the All Black back row for so long, faces the same long road to recovery after an operation last Saturday.
At least four more international players face an inactive Christmas: Johnny Sexton after another blow to the head, Wasps’ versatile Lion Elliot Daly, Clermont’s hurricane of a wing, Alivereti Raka, and the club’s best young French three-quarter, 21-year- old Damian Penaud.
My team of the weekend
15. Anthony Watson (Bath);
14. Elliot Daly (Wasps);
13. Garry Ringrose (Leinster);
12. Ma’a Nonu (Toulon);
11. Isa Nacewa (Leinster);
10. Christian Leali’ifano (Ulster);
9. Conor Murray (Munster);
1. Mako Vunipola (Saracens);
2. Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter);
3. Tadhg Furlong (Leinster);
4. Billy Holland (Munster);
5. Sebastien Vahaamahina (Clermont);
6. Peter O’Mahony (Munster);
7. Francois Louw (Bath);
8. CJ Stander (Munster)
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