AMLIN CHALLENGE CUP FINAL HARLEQUINS v STADE FRANCAIS: GERRY THORNLEYfinds Harlequins' coach motivated more by the prize at stake while his Stade Francais counterpart is focused on Heineken Cup qualification

EVER SINCE Harlequins were the first to take the trademan’s entrance into the Heineken Cup in 2001, the stock of the Amlin Challenge Cup has increased, and all the more so this season, as Michael Cheika freely admits, for a Stade Francais side that has just finished 11th in the Top 14, fully 23 points outside the top six.

“Winning the trophy would be nice, but getting the ticket to next season’s Heineken Cup would be nicer,” admits the former Leinster coach in advance of tomorrow’s final with Harlequins at the Cardiff Arms Park.

“I think we’re making significant changes in the club, we have been all year. It’s a classic work-in-progress and as the weeks ahead unfold and we announce what we’re doing next year, we’re building a group of playing in that tournament and we want to experience it.”

This would appear to have been a difficult first season in charge with the one-time big-spending and cosmopolitan Parisians. And in contrast to Max Guazzini, the benefactor of the French champions in 1998, 2000, ’03, ’04 and ’07, and Heineken Cup runners-up in ’01 and ’05, Racing Metro owner Jacky Lorenzetti, who heads a giant real estate company called Foncia, has bankrolled the nouveau riche Parisians to a second successive Top 14 semi-final.

“We’ve made difficult decisions which were necessary and had maybe been avoided for the last few years. It’s been tough and we’ve bled a little bit but at the same time if you look at the Amlin, in the knockout stages especially, we’ve been led by top six opposition in France, Montpellier and Clermont, and both times we came back to win the game. Even though our team has been very inconsistent, it has the ability,” said Cheika.

He acknowledges that there will be a high turnover in players during the close-season, with Paul Warwick, Stan Wright and Felipe Contepomi the first of several incoming, and Lionel Beauxis and Juan Martin Leguizamon thus far leading the exodus.

“It’s a reconstruction that needed to take place,” said Cheika, Stade’s fourth coach in four years. Bernard Laporte has headed a Canadian consortium that reputedly bought a 51 per cent share in the club for €12 million which will see the former French coach become vice-president to Guazzini.

Harlequins are comparatively settled, with Conor O’Shea talking enthusiastically about the age profile of his young squad and keeping this team together. “We’re really excited. I know people say it’s the Amlin Challenge, but if the boys could have played it last Tuesday they would have. We’ve a young team and we’ve played some brilliant rugby, but we haven’t won close games, in a nutshell. We’ve the best defensive record, we’ve made more line breaks than anybody else, and that’s the way we play.

“Some of that is down to mentality and the boost that we got from Munster. Our games are good to watch and are competitive.”

After finishing seventh in the Premiership, Harlequins also need to win to qualify for the Heineken Cup (or hope Northampton beat Leinster) but publicly O’Shea takes the opposite view to Cheika. “Forget winning the Heineken Cup. Winning silverware, mentally for a team, is huge, and if we can do it having played the likes of Bayonne, Wasps, Munster and Stade, it will stand the young guys in great stead, but we know it’s massive.”

Cheika lauds O’Shea as “a straight shooter”, in a core group of managers including Nick Easter, Danny Care and Nick Evans, who play good rugby. “You can see his character starting to come through the team and the way he helped Harlequins revel in their underdog status when beating Munster in their Thomond Park semi-final.

“He won’t have the same luxury against us,” laughs Cheika. “You can’t say 11th in the Top 14 is going to be the favourites. He’s doing his best to ham it up but unfortunately he’s going to have to eat the fact that his team has performed better than mine and he can’t play the underdog.”

But O’Shea tries and listing Stade’s impressive array of big names – Bergamasco, Parisse, Beauxis, Roncero, Dupuy, Pape, Palmer, Haskell – he adds: “Big game players are big game players. I think it will be a cracker. People will enjoy individual battles all over the pitch and we want to enjoy it. I’ve told the guys this week, whatever happens, we’re going out to play and we ain’t going into our shells.”

For the record, the bookies make it a scratch game.