Neil Jenkins had never been to Ravenhill. While practising his goalkicking on Thursday, he had not, apparently, been enamoured with the venue's swirling wind. Doubt can upset even the most metronomic of goalkickers, and the next night the all-time leading points scorer at both Test and European Cup level duly missed three penalties in his side's 32-23 defeat. All part of the European Cup's unique and rich tapestry.
On Saturday, several hundred Newport supporters also made their first trip to Thomond Park, clearly enjoying the craic and repartee with their hosts. Their team was also a cosmopolitan mix of internationals (they had a dozen in their starting line-up to Cardiff's 14), but were better coached than their Welsh rivals, whose forwards looked as if they'd never practised a line-out together. Munster were more than delighted to merely hold on for a win, and marked down their inaugural trip to Newport as a toughie. As Declan Kidney admitted in the immediate aftermath of Saturday's win, "I'm glad it's not tomorrow."
All the while though, the European Cup is offering more genuine, pan-European rugby variety than even the Six Nations Championship, never mind all the parochial stuff we all get up to for most of the season. New venues, new culture clashes, utterly unpredictable outcomes crop up every week. It's filled such a huge void that the wonder is no one had thought of it decades ago.
The pity, therefore, is that we supporters can't see more of it, and that the coverage is so parochial (mea culpa on behalf of the newspaper coverage as well). Sure, lots of games are televised each weekend, but so many of the matches are shown only on regional channels that the breadth of the competition is not being communicated throughout the six participating nations.
The point has already been made, but the need for televised weekly magazine packages encompassing highlights from all the six pools, and perhaps an odd feature/interview/general overview, was underlined forcefully by the opening weekend. A host of alternative sporting attractions limited the scope for rugby/sports fans to see either of the two Ireland-based games. Nor does this take into account the lack of coverage from other games. Presumably, Irish supporters - and the same applies to those from the other competing nations - are not so myopic that they wouldn't be interested in seeing edited highlights from say, the Toulouse-Saracens, Biarritz-Northampton and Bath-Castres games, to name but three. For starters, these are the other respective pool rivals of the three Irish provinces.
One of the key ingredients in the success of football's equivalent Champions League is that highlights and magazine packages are made available and included as part of the television deals with the contracted television channels. It broadens the scope, and therefore the interest in, this competition at a more pan-European level. Until that happens, then in truth the ERC and the respective television networks aren't ensuring proper coverage of the tournament.
In due course the European Cup will surely expand, perhaps to embrace four pools of six as opposed to the current format comprising six pools of four, which in turn would mean an increase from six to 10 pool matches for each competing side. The key here, most probably, is the French.
THEIR one-off achievement in beating the All Blacks and reaching the 1999 World Cup final stands out like a beacon since their back-to-back Grand Slams of 1997-98. At European Cup level especially, the lustre has gone from the French challenge since the inaugural win of Toulouse in 1996 and Brive in 1997. It is now three years since a French side won Europe's premier non-international competition. Their entrants' winning percentage has slipped from near 75 per cent to barely about the 50 per cent mark in that time, as was the case last weekend when, Biarritz's predictable home win over an under-strength Northampton apart, France's only successes came against Italian opposition. The defeats for Castres and Pau at Bath and Leicester were one thing, the home loss suffered by Toulouse to Saracens quite another.
All of which increasingly gives the lie to the notion that French club rugby is the best in Europe. Instead, it has looked bloated and over-demanding with 24 first division clubs. Much more of this, i.e., failure to win the European Cup again next May, and the French will surely see the need to broaden their horizons further in an effort to improve their standards abroad.
Crucially, unlike their English counterparts, the French federation has far more hold over its clubs, and steps have already been taken toward an expanded European Cup, albeit in a roundabout way, with the reduction in the French first division from 24 to 18 clubs.
On the premise that an expanded European Cup is more a case of when than if, how does Irish rugby prepare itself for this eventuality? Whether this means that the mooted Celtic League has a short shelf life, and it may well do, for the time being the IRFU understandably believe they cannot afford not to be in it.
Ideally though, this should not mean reverting to a one-round, or three-game, Interprovincial Championship. The European Cup's opening weekend only re-inforced the view that the home and away, six-series concept has been an undoubted success, ensuring bigger crowds and better preparation for Europe. Attendances at Ravenhill and Thomond Park were amongst the top five crowd figures in the opening weekend's dozen venues, and Irish rugby, relative to the size of the population, is now arguably the best supported at this level and the most envied, in certain respects.
The rugby public here have voted with their feet. The club game has to take a back seat now. Besides, the better the Irish performance levels in the Six Nations Championship and in the European Cup, the better the financial rewards for the IRFU, and the better the chances of keeping Ireland's most coveted players at home. As the saying goes, you have to speculate to accumulate.
