ON RUGBY:LEINSTER AND Munster head into their final two similarly tricky, defining Heineken Cup pool games – banana skins at home to faltering English Premiership opposition and rather more daunting treks away to nouveau riche French teams. They do so on the back of scratchy home wins dominated by pedantic Welsh referees, while indebted to their frontline Irish outhalves and place-kickers. Perhaps, the similarities end there.
Whereas Munster are much better placed in the Magners League, that is secondary to the holy grail that is the Heineken Cup – pretty much to all Irish players, supporters and media alike. Thus, Leinster can secure qualification by beating Saracens at the RDS on Saturday, though as Saracens showed in round four when picking up their first win away to Racing, there is little likelihood of them rolling over. This is especially so given the history of the first meeting when Leinster won at Wembley in one of the tournament’s finest displays to date, although it may be a little diluted by Brendan Venter’s return to South Africa yesterday bearing in mind another of his rather lop-sided post-match loser’s rant which contained the bizarre claim that rugby would die.
It being Heineken Cup week, we know the Irish provinces will pick up their intensity and that last week’s form is a less than reliable yardstick. But how Munster could do with a performance akin to Leinster’s at Wembley; although you had to have some sympathy with them given referee James Jones’ erratic display at Musgrave Park in Saturday’s 22-20 win over Glasgow Warriors. His scrum calls were overly long, leading to a couple of early engagements by the Munster frontrow, but the 10-2 first-half penalty count suggested the Welsh official had some pre-conceived notions, and perhaps had even watched Stuart Barnes and Sky Sports’ critique of Munster’s recycling in attack and “sealing off” prior to the two Ospreys games. (One fears next Sunday’s English referee Dave Pearson might also have done so.)
One ventures few referees other than Jones would have called three of the first-half penalties which he did against Munster when recycling in attack, and arguably no other referee on the planet would have penalised, much less sinbinned, Keith Earls just before half-time for not coming through the gate – when he seemed actually to do so. Just as curiously, the second-half penalty count was 7-0 in Munster’s favour.
Although there were glimpses of the individual running threat of Lifeimi Mafi and Paul Warwick in the first half, it made for a less than fluid night for Munster as Ronan O’Gara brilliantly played the corners after the break and kicked his goals.
It leaves Tony McGahan and co with selection posers at scrumhalf and inside centre, and in the secondrow, although to maximise the impact of Paul O’Connell’s return, he surely has to start.
By contrast, Ulster arguably had the best preparation of all, which was just as well given their opponents in next Saturday’s crunch encounter at Ravenhill, Biarritz, ran in 10 tries in their 65-22 win at home to Agen. Although they failed to add a point in the second half at home to Treviso on Friday night, Ulster coach Brian McLaughlin will be grateful they had the bonus point by half-time and could watch satisfying introductions for Stephen Ferris and Dan Tuohy, who should start in an otherwise largely unchanged team.
It was particularly encouraging to see a relatively newly-liberated Ulster score two of their four first-half tries from deep off a quick throw and a quick tap, thereby capitalising on the exceptional broken-field running and quick feet of Andrew Trimble. Perhaps the Ulster think tank reasoned that like most Italian opposition Treviso might struggle with a quick tempo, but one ventures that a similarly ambitious approach might yield dividends against Biarritz, who are capable of scaling heights themselves but tend to love a ponderous set-piece game, all the more so away from home.
In any event, Ulster’s first-half approach was fantasy rugby compared to some of the other dross on television over the weekend.
Helpfully, both Leinster and Munster’s remaining English opponents – Saracens and London Irish – played each other on Sunday, as did their respective French opponents – Racing Metro and Toulon. Watching these games was way beyond the call of duty. Saracens won the Vicarage Road slugfest 12-6, or by four penalties to two, while Toulon won their arm wrestle at Stade Yves du Manoir in Colombes by 15-12, each side sharing three drop goals.
This was typical of the fare being served up by the Top 14 this season, big budgets and high-profile names, fierce physicality, a compelling war at scrum time especially, but scarcely a hint of a try or a counter-attack or a quick tap or a quick throw or anything off the play book in sight; instead plenty of percentage territory rugby and crash-ball dummy runners as each side probed for three-pointers. Once again, the refereeing didn’t help, mind. This is the old game of a couple of years ago.
Allowing for the ferocity of the scrummaging, with Toulon taking it to Racing in the first half before losing some of their bite after the break, in truth there was little to frighten their Irish opponents. The Racing outhalf Jonathan Wisniewski was last season’s Top 14 leading points scorer and drop-goal expert – titles which his Toulon counterpart Jonny Wilkinson has assumed so far this season.
So it was that Wisniewski landed two penalties and two drop goals, along with a long-range drop goal by fullback Francois Steyn, to a penalty and three drop goals by Wilkinson, though the latter missed a sitter of a penalty in front of the posts with his first kick of the evening. Wilkinson would also fail with three late drop goal attempts – two right-footers drifted wide and a left-footer was charged down. The penalty count was predictably more consistent here – 13-4 to the home side. Quel surprise.
