Donal Lenihan: Munster remain deluded about their status in Europe
TRY: Munster’s Damian De Allende celebrates with Joey Carbery after scoring a try last Saturday against Leinster. The hosts still lost 34-19. Pic: Dan Sheridan, Inpho
I’m not sure why but, for whatever reason, the love affair we’ve enjoyed with the Heineken Champions Cup in this country over the last two decades has waned a little. Perhaps it was the lack of travel over the last two seasons as the tournament was played out in soulless surroundings in empty arenas.
Trips to Toulouse, Clermont, Bordeaux and Paris always offer so much more than the games themselves even if the match day experience in places like the Ernest Wallon in Toulouse, Clermont's Stade Marcel Michelin, the Stade Chaban-Delmas in Bordeaux and the incomparable indoor surroundings of Racing 92’s La Defense Arena served to make those trips memorable, irrespective of the result.
Next weekend sees the round of sixteen which, for the first time, will decide who advances to the quarter-finals based on the aggregate score over the home and away games on successive weekends.
This new format was supposed to have been introduced at the quarter-final stage last season but had to be abandoned due to Covid. It’s now being trialled a round earlier and should prove fascinating.
The higher-ranked teams from the pool phase are rewarded by staging the second of the encounters at home, thus making it essential to stay within touching distance on the scoreboard after the first leg.
Teams are accustomed to looking to return home from demanding away fixtures with a minimum of a losing bonus point in the bag. Based on the same logic, remaining within a seven-point margin of your opponents after the away leg, with a home game to follow immediately, will help immensely in terms of staying in the fight.
With the disruption in continuity for the Irish provinces from having their players away on international duty two months before the resumption of European action, it helps enormously that Ireland have enjoyed a fruitful campaign.
For years our provinces benefitted from a positive showing by the national team in the Six Nations which set them up perfectly when it came to facing many of the same players, lining out for the big French and English clubs, when returning to Heineken Cup action.
With seven clubs in the last sixteen, the French are well placed to continue their dominance of European club rugby with holders Toulouse looking to further enhance their love affair with the Heineken Cup by extending their record haul of titles to six.
The top three slots in the recent Six Nations table is replicated in the Champions Cup with those seven French clubs qualifying along with four Irish provinces with five English clubs filling the remaining slots. The fact that Scotland, Wales and Italy have no club representatives whatsoever at this stage of European club action further highlights the challenges facing their national teams at present.
Exposure to the best club teams in the Heineken Cup has served the development of Irish players incredibly well since the national team turned a corner in 2000. Pitting yourself against the very best players, including seasoned Springboks, Wallabies and All Blacks that the English and French clubs have to offer has taken the mystique that used to surround some of the best players away and increased Ireland’s competitiveness on the international stage.
With the Champions Cup final scheduled to take place at the Stade Velodrome in Marseille next month, the French have even more incentive to make it all the way. Toulouse, with six of the gargantuan French Grand Slam pack in back rowers Francois Cros and Anthony Jelonch, explosive loose head Cyril Baille and hooker Julien Marchand, supplemented by reserve hooker Peato Mauvaka and second row Thibaud Flament will be as formidable as ever up front.
At scrum-half they boast the best player in the world at the moment in Antoine Dupont. He’s capable of winning any game on his own. The way his half-back partnership with Romain Ntamack, for club and country, has flourished over the last few years has been fascinating to watch and is now amongst the very best on the international stage. Regular full back Thomas Ramos has also been used effectively off the bench for France throughout the Six Nations.
That is a potent mix to start with. Ulster finished the pool stage as the second seed but got scant reward for their highly impressive four-game unbeaten return by ending up drawn with Toulouse for their efforts. Toulouse just about scraped through after both of their home pool games were registered as 28-0 defeats as a result of Covid induced cancellations.
Thankfully they qualified at the death as the tournament would have lost all credibility had the holders been eliminated due to issues outside of their control. That said, history offers them advance warning of how difficult winning in Belfast can be, even for a class outfit like them. They will be very keen on carrying some kind of a buffer on the scoreboard for the return leg at the Kingspan Stadium.
Right now, Leinster are about the last opponent Connacht would have wanted to face given how their season has imploded since the start of the year. Playing Leinster three times in four weeks should come with a health warning, especially after Connacht started the first of those games with a comprehensive 8-45 home defeat in their URC clash ten days ago.
With a substantial core of the Irish Triple Crown-winning side primed to return to action for the Blues in the first leg in Galway on Friday night, Connacht have an unenviable task over the next two weekends as Leo Cullen and Stuart Lancaster seek to get their team back to their competitive best for the business end of the season.
The comprehensive nature of that recent Leinster win at the Sportsground, albeit facilitated by the sending off of Connacht centre Tom Daly after only two minutes, suggests it's going to be a challenging fortnight for Andy Friend’s charges. Connacht will have to be far better defensively than they have been recently. The return to arms of Bundee Aki and Mack Hansen should help appreciably on that front.
The fact that Leinster’s URC win was secured by a largely second-string side meant their returning internationals were under pressure to replicate that performance against Munster last Saturday. Not that it showed. Despite starting with an entire second string front five, Leinster had sufficient quality sprinkled around the park to highlight, once again, how far behind Munster have fallen in this increasingly lopsided rivalry.
The number of empty seats scattered around Thomond Park sent another message to those running Munster Rugby, who appear oblivious to the frustrations of the public. Four months after the announcement that Johann Van Graan is leaving, we are still in the dark as to who is going to replace him or what the management structure is even going to look like.
I’ve been advocating a director of rugby to plot the long term course of rugby within the province for some time now but nobody is listening. Meanwhile, Munster remain somewhat delusional as to their current status within the European game.
The next few weeks in Europe, coupled with a demanding URC trip to Belfast to face Ulster, will tell a lot. Right now Munster appear somewhat rudderless. Why, for example, does Van Graan keep selecting Chris Cloete, who it was confirmed last week is also heading to Bath, over Alex Kendellen or John Hodnett? That duo not only represents the future but Kendellen has the credentials to be Munster’s long-term captain once he bags a bit more experience over the next few seasons.
Munster are somewhat fortunate that the Exeter Chiefs side they meet over the next two weeks and who won the Heineken Champions Cup as recently as 2020, have had a poor season by their high standards. They are struggling to make the knockout phase of the Gallagher Premiership for the first time in years.
Rather ominously, they produced their best performance of the season last Saturday with a comprehensive 42-22 over Van Graan’s new charges Bath to move up to fourth place in the Premiership table.
With that box ticked, the Chiefs will be waiting with bated breath for the arrival of Munster at a newly extended Sandy Park on Saturday. Munster had better be ready.
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