Peter Jackson: Former Exiles showing London Irish could have been contenders
Saracens' Lucio Cinti scores their side's sixth try against Connacht. Picture: Mike Egerton/PA
The lost souls of London Irish, those who rose in thunderous acclamation at their club’s entry into the Champions’ Cup, will have found crumbs of comfort from a madcap weekend.
Nothing can bring their team back but some of those Exiles driven into farther exile in search of employment last summer could be seen all over Europe and beyond; fleeting reminders of what might have been for supporters left high and dry without a club to support.
Almost 12,000 who cheered them to the rafters after a top-six Premiership finish believed there were bound for a season of adventure on the green fields of France and beyond, when they had been doomed all along.
Those still bereft seven months later have had to settle for watching familiar names in unfamiliar strips tear it up on behalf of different employers. What they saw would have confirmed what many believed all along; Irish would have been contenders.
The evidence came from near and far, from Clydeside where Kyle Rowe, one ex-Irish wing, helped Glasgow secure a precious win at Bayonne, to the Cape of Good Hope where another ex-Irish wing, the Stormers’ Ben Loader, ensured La Rochelle lost their moorings in Cape Town.
In North London, a third ex-Irish wing, Lucio Cinti, scored for Saracens against Connacht. As if that wasn’t enough, his Argentinian compatriot Juan Martin Gonzalez (ex-Irish) topped an impressive cast as man-of-the-match.
Yet another Irish wing, England’s Ollie Hassell-Collins, appeared for Leicester, big winners in Paris last night over Stade Francais. It seemed that almost anywhere you looked, the line-up featured at least one of the London Irish diaspora.
Two could be found in the East Midlands – Scotland scrum half Ben White for Toulon, the uncapped flanker Tom Pearson for Northampton. Lyon called Paddy Jackson off the bench in their win over the Bulls, Henry Arundell lined up in Belfast for Racing, Josh Caulfield for Bristol at Bordeaux, Chandler Cunningham-South for Quins against Toulouse.
That 54 former London Irish players are now in the service of 31 clubs in eight countries spanning three continents shows how many have been scattered so far and so wide. They include Wallaby lock Adam Coleman whose return from injury will make Bordeaux all the more formidable.
Meanwhile, the Irish fans without a team to call their own can only console themselves by making a slight tweak to Marlon Brando’s famous line from The Waterfront: ‘’We could’a been contenders.’’
What Bayonne and Lyon did in the first round, Sale and Bristol did in the second.
At this rate the Champions’ Cup organisers may be prompted to clarify the rules of engagement: "If there’s a trip you don’t fancy, never mind. You can always send your second team.’’ Bristol wrote off theirs to Bordeaux by changing their entire starting XV from the previous week. Sale changed eleven for Dublin on Saturday night, a decision which didn’t stop their admirable director of rugby Alex Sanderson saying: "We are going full bore." Turning up at the RDS or the Aviva to find a depowered opponent is nothing new for Leinster supporters. Gloucester dispatched a reserve team to Dublin on the same weekend last year and duly lost 57-0.
The majority of those who bought their tickets for the Sale match would have done so on the reasonable assumption that the Sharks would have come heavily armed with all their big fish. For all Sale’s resistance, home fans were entitled to ask whether they had been short-changed.
In the best of all fan-friendly worlds, tickets for Champions’ Cup pool matches ought to carry a warning: "We cannot be held responsible in the event of the visitors fielding a second team."
Champions’ Cup cheerleaders attempt to justify the selection of weakened teams by citing the demands of domestic competition. That their home Premiership fixture against Saracens this Friday night matters more than Leinster in Dublin belittles Europe’s biggest club event.
The organisers, European Professional Club Rugby, have yet to address the issue. To date it hasn’t gone beyond chief executive Dominic McKay saying: "We’ve got a set of tournament rules that we want to try and enforce which encourages the best players to be available for every single match."
How much longer will they go on turning a blind eye…?
As a breed, props are built to stand the test of time and right now nobody does it better than Cian Healy. At 36, Leinster’s loosehead still does what he’s always done, decorating the grunt-‘n-groan of the set-piece with an unusually hefty amount of tries for someone in his position.
He’s been doing so for Leinster in Europe for the last 13 years, scoring his first against Clermont before almost 45,000 at The Aviva, so long ago that Leo Cullen wore the armband alongside Nathan Hines. Healy also scored the second in a 24-8 home win and again in the 2012 final against Ulster at Twickenham.
As Sale know to their cost, his enforced absence from the World Cup has not affected his enduring ability to sniff out a try from a metre or two. He’s done it so consistently for so long as to be within sniffing range of reaching 50 over the course of 16 years for province and country.
Another landmark is within closer reach, Ronan O’Gara’s record of 110 appearances in Europe. With a bit of luck, Healy will overtake that by the end of the season.
When they drank Llanelli dry the day the Scarlets beat New Zealand 51 years ago, the public houses to run out of beer included The Black Lion in Market Street. Like Stradey Park itself, the old place is no more and yet a team bearing its name dared to take centre-stage in the old steel town at the weekend.
Given the parlous state of Welsh rugby on the bones of its collective backside, the result of their visit (Scarlets 7, Black Lion 23) might have left the uninitiated wondering whether a pub team had gate-crashed the Challenge Cup and taken a famous old club to the cleaners.
The Black Lion in question, a club team from Tblisi in Georgia, began as if they had entered perfectly into the festive spirit; visitors from the east bearing gifts, in their case a seven-pointer all tied up with tinsel and delivered inside four minutes.
The relative few still faithful to the Scarlet cause sat back in anticipation of a landslide win. Some may never have heard of opponents elevated to Europe’s second-string event from competing in the Eastern Conference of Rugby Europe’s Super Cup against barely known clubs like Tel Aviv Heat.
Having endured a depressingly long night watching their pack scorched in the furnace of the Georgian scrum, those fans still there at the end booed their team off. It left director of rugby Dwayne Peel to make one of the understatements of the season: "We need to get better."
How could French Mathieu Raynal, one of the best in the business, let Harvey Skinner off without a yellow card for his dangerously high hit on Jack Crowley. That the Exeter fly-half then forced Conor Murray into a critical knock-on added insult to Munster’s injury.
Full marks to Luc Ramos for bringing his English to bear in handling the Saracens-Connacht tie. Owen Farrell got his message after the Saracens’ captain had been suckered into conceding three points by Connacht wing Shayne Bolton: "You are the leader of your team. You need to follow."0
Ex-Scotland full back Stuart Hogg on Sale’s prospects of beating Leinster in Dublin: "They have come across with every intention of winning." Didn’t anyone tell him that they’d given 11 of their first-team the weekend off?
Ex-England wing Topsy Ojo on Bristol’s chances in Bordeaux: "So much to play for." So much that the Bears sent a second team and got what they deserved.
Tributes to the gigantic Irish Lion Syd Millar duly took place in Dublin and Belfast on Saturday evening, the former shared with Tadhg Furlong’s father, James. Harlequins paid similar tribute to the popular London-based broadcaster Russell Hargreaves who died earlier this month at the age of 45.
All three were accorded a heartfelt and respectful minute’s applause. Why rugby feels the need to follow soccer in abandoning the traditional minute’s silence is another matter.
Springboks stand-off Manie Libbock’s last-kick conversion from far out on the right to complete Stormers’ implausible win over La Rochelle.
Exeter twice coming from a long way behind to pick Munster’s pockets.
Ulster bouncing off the ropes at Bath to put the skids under Racing.
Toulouse, all aglitter at The Stoop with their irresistible brand of Total Rugby.
Exeter 32, Munster 24.
Stade Francais 24, Leicester 27.
Cardiff 32, Bath 39.
Toulouse, Bordeaux, Bath.
Nine out of ten: Leinster, Northampton, Leicester.
La Rochelle Munster Connacht Cardiff, Toulon, Stade Francais and Bayonne.
15 George Furbank (Northampton) 14 Tom Roebuck (Sale) 13 Henry Slade (Exeter) 12 Stuart McCormick (Ulster) 11 Damian Penaud (Bordeaux) 10 Jack Crowley (Munster) 9 Antoine Dupont (Toulouse) 1 Andrew Porter (Leinster) 2 Archie Vanes (Leicester) 3 Nika Abuladze (Exeter) 4 Tadhg Beirne (Munster) 5 Emanuel Meafou (Toulouse) 6 Juan Martin Gonzalez (Saracens) 7 Josh van der Flier (Leinster) 8 Alfie Barbeary (Bath).
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