European Club Rugby : Peter Jackson's round 3 review

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Peter Jackson's round 3 review

14 December 2009, 11:39 am

It may be a trifle premature to be thinking of an all-Ireland final in Paris next May and some sort of poetic justice for Thierry Henry's deliberate knock-on.

Perhaps the rugby gods are already at work conspiring to make belated atonement for their soccer counterparts by lending all three Irish contenders a celestial hand on their journey to the promised land of the Stade de France, the scene of Henry’s crime against the Republic’s footballers during last month’s World Cup decider.

Munster’s good fortune at being able to concede three Perpignan tries and still count on Ronan O’Gara trumping the French champions with eight goals off both feet supports the theory that a little divine intervention can go a very long way. It enabled them to come from behind three times on a night when the faithful converged on Thomond Park laden with heavy apprehension.

All too aware that a match made that bit trickier by Munster’s erratic form could have ended with every bell in Limerick tolling for their team, the city had put the flags out with renewed fervour, anxious to remind their Catalan visitors that this would be no ordinary occasion. Even the inflatable Santas in the porches of houses along Pairc de Valera adjacent to the stadium had been wrapped up in Munster flags.

On the other side of the Irish Sea less than 24 hours later at Parc y Scarlets, Leinster showed a fine sense of gratitude to their hosts for having done the holders the almighty favour of upsetting London Irish one week after the English Premiership team had found the nerve to open the tournament by winning in Dublin.

Leinster romped home in the manner of thoroughbreds, taking less than half an hour to turn the table almost upside down with every likelihood of the Scarlets shipping another four tries from Saturday’s away leg before another full house at the RDS. By issuing an overdue reminder that the Irish challenge is not limited to south of the border, Ulster’s beating of the hitherto unbeaten Stade Francais suggested that the Heineken quarter-final map may end up in a deeper shade of green than at any time since its creation in 1995.

On a weekend when the major casualties included four French clubs who have been to an aggregate total of ten finals (Toulouse, Perpignan, Brive and Stade), no country fared better than 50-50. Perpignan, denied by O’Gara’s enduring knack of delivering when the chips were down, as they were last Friday night as never before, lost the match by an inch at 24-23 and the penalty count by a mile, 17-5.

That the decisive one should have been conceded by Bertrand Guiry for a high tackle in front of the posts was cruel on a novice flanker who had otherwise come through the proverbial baptism of fire with flying colours. Paul O’Connell having spurned two further shots at goal to beat the clock rather than run the risk of giving up possession, Perpignan resisted any temptation to blame English referee Wayne Barnes.

They blamed themselves, instead. ‘Every time we go abroad we talk about the need for discipline and the need to adapt to the referee,’ Perry Freshwater, their veteran England loosehead who had given John Hayes a predictably hard time in the scrum, said before hurrying home. ‘I’ve been saying this for seven years now. Munster put us under huge pressure and at crucial times we couldn’t live with it. Some of the penalties we gave away were dumb. Cut out one of O’Gara’s kicks at goal and we’d have won the game.’

The Irish clean sweep does no more at this stage than keep all three interested in the quarter-finals with no guarantee that all three will make it that far in unison for the first time but their teams are now imbued with a winning attitude which stems from cleaning up all the big prizes from the Six Nations to the Heineken Cup, the Grand Slam to the Churchill Cup and, for my money, the top three on the Lions tour into the bargain (Rob Kearney, Brian O’Driscoll, Jamie Heaslip).

Leinster flanker Sean O’Brien epitomises the soaring ambition of a new Irish generation no longer content, like their predecessors, to ‘give it a lash.’ The 22-year-old openside flanker from the distinctly unfashionable rugby county of Carlow might have been satisfied with a man-of-the-match contribution to the champions’ maximum-point win in Llanelli. He was nothing of the sort.

‘It wasn’t a good all-round performance and we are not happy,’ he said after scoring the fourth, bonus-point try in a 32-7 win which left the Scarlets not merely beaten but outclassed. ‘We got a few lucky breaks in the first 20 or 30 minutes. We have standards and we didn’t stick to them.’

Ulster, with a host of potentially outstanding home-grown players like Darren Cave and Chris Henry blazing the same trail as the monumental Stephen Ferris, will travel to Brussels for their return scrap with Stade expecting to beat them again.

Considering how they have been routinely beaten on the continent over the last ten years with only one draw, in Toulouse, to show for their trouble, that represents a major shift of attitude. Under Brian McLaughlin’s direction as head coach, Ulster have discovered a capacity for edge-of-the-seat tries like those finished off last week by Nigel Brady and Simon Danielli.

A repeat performance from Ian Humphreys in Belgium will do more than give Max Guazzini a sharp reminder that the Stade president concedes home advantage to Ulster at his peril. It will also serve as further proof that Northern Ireland’s penchant for bearded footballers of a match winning propensity did not end with the passing of George Best.

While Leinster sail on towards their inevitable decider at London Irish amid the increasing prospect of both reaching the last eight from the same pool, Munster will need to be a whole lot better in Perpignan on Sunday if they are to stay on course for the knock-out stages.

A losing bonus point, as they showed in Clermont last season, can make all the difference when the quarter-final reckoning comes in the New Year. Even if they come home empty-handed, Munster’s fate will still be largely in their own hands with every prospect of the usual climax, a winner-take-all home tie against English opposition, as provided next month by the team they were supposed to beat in the 2000 final at Twickenham – Northampton.

The Saints have serious European ambitions of their own, justifiably so given the fact that they alone are averaging two tries a match in the trench warfare of the Guinness Premiership and that they have already beaten Munster this season.