Peter Jackson, the Daily Mail's highly respected Rugby Correspondent, has reported extensively on the Heineken Cup down the years and here he offers his Top 10 Heineken Cup games of all-time.
There have been 970 Heineken Cup ties which hardly makes the editor's request to pick my all-time top ten any easier. After a fortnight's deliberation interrupted by a few irresistible distractions, like Ireland winning the Grand Slam, here goes:
No. 1 -- Munster 32, Wasps 37
(Semi-final, Lansdowne Road, April 25, 2004).
Numero uno, unquestionably the best Heineken Cup match I have had the great fortune to see, the sunny Sunday when Lawrence Dallaglio & co. dragged themselves off the ropes and into their first final. In the end they were catapulted there by a hooker who had once been considered too fat for his own good.
During the fortnight before the tie, Trevor Leota had been put on a strict burger-free diet, so strict that the club hired a minder to keep a round-the-clock watch on the squat Samoan to ensure that he scoffed only the right stuff. Leota, whose weight had ballooned at one stage to 21 stone, struck four minutes from the end of normal time with the corner try to settle a tie which had to be seen to be believed.
The English champions had dredged every last ounce of will-power to come from ten points down and claim their place in the final against Toulouse. Only Wasps could have recovered from the sledgehammer blows of two converted Munster tries within a three-minute spell during the second half.
Nobody usually recovers from the demoralising blow of falling that far behind to the Irish giants, not when it meant taking on 40,000 fans amongst them the province's most famous footballing son, Roy Keane.
Aware of what was being asked of them, Wasps had fired themselves up as never before, so much so that they would have taken the dressing-room door off its hinges had someone not been smart enough to open it. As epics go, this remains in a class of its own, even after five years.
No. 2 -- Stade Francais 30, Leicester 34
(Final, Parc des Princes, May 19, 2001)
Nobody had ever kicked ten goals in a final before or since.
Diego Dominguez did it beneath a blazing sun only to find that nine penalties and one drop goal were not enough to land the Parisians the biggest prize of all. That the little Italian master ultimately fell short was down to Leicester's indomitable spirit under Martin Johnson and Austin Healey's priceless capacity for the unexpected. Barely three minutes of normal time remained when Dominguez went into double figures and put Stade ahead for the fourth time. Fewer than 90 seconds were left on the clock when the Tigers' Australian centre, Pat Howard, called the move which cured Leicester's stiff necks at watching Diego's barrage sail between the uprights.
Healey had been moved from scrum-half to stand-off five minutes earlier although it was something of a miracle that he actually got there in the first place because of the knee damage which would ultimately force him to retire. Some 48 hours before the final, he claimed he was unable to walk.
'I've got more pain-killers in me than you'd find in the casualty ward of a hospital,' he said on the day. 'In the end it came down to one thing. I owe Leicester more than they owe me.'
He made Howard's call work like a dream, breaking the line and leaving such a long trail of Gallic devastation in his wake that he had sent Leon Lloyd flying in at the corner before the French knew what had hit them. Tim Stimpson's booming conversion from the right touchline finally eliminated the danger of Stade stealing the spoils with an eleventh Dominguez goal.
No. 3 -- Munster 33, Gloucester 6
(Pool stage, Thomond Park, January 18, 2003)
The original 'Miracle Match.' Just before they went to work on an escape of Colditz magnitude, Munster's supposedly condemned men read their own obituary notice as composed by a distinguished English pundit, one Jeremy Guscott.
As a rabble-rousing way of generating the controlled fury which would result in Gloucester succumbing to the most sensational knock-out seen in the pool competition, it proved to be an essential piece of their modus operandi. Thomond Park, the ultimate rugby theatre of mass hysteria, had not witnessed anything quite like it.
Frankie Sheahan spotted what Guscott had to say about Munster's early demise from the competition and the hooker made it his business to stick the cutting on the dressing-room wall. 'Guscott was quoted as saying that the Gloucester pack would destroy us,' Sheahan said as the Limerick celebrations raged all around him. 'I felt obliged to let the
boys know how we were being written off across the water.
'They read it and their reaction was there for everyone to see. It gave us that extra motivation to come up with the right answers.'
Comprehensively beaten in the first match at Kingsholm, Munster had to win the return, the final pool match, by four clear tries and 26 points, all that against the then leaders of the English Premiership. Their fourth try arrived in the last minute of normal time and the requisite wining distance had been reached by the first minute of stoppage time.
Gloucester were so frazzled by the whole experience that, in their blind panic towards the end, they failed to see an escape from the nightmare. A penalty five minutes from time in front of the Munster posts and the three points would have taken them some way to safety and a place in the last eight.
Inexplicably, their stand-off, Ludovic Mercier, ran the penalty because Gloucester, in their confusion, believed they needed to score a try.
No. 4 -- Wasps 27, Toulouse 20
(Final, Twickenham, May 23, 2004)
Heading towards extra time when a Welshman stole it for the English club. As Clement Poitrenaud dithered in shepherding a hopeful punt into the in-goal area rather than concede a line-out, Rob Howley, always the sharpest of operators, came from nowhere to pounce on the ball and claim the winning try.
No. 5 -- Wasps 25, Leicester 9
(Final, Twickenham, May 20, 2007)
Leicester had won everything else -- the Premiership and the Anglo-Welsh -- and were clear favourites to regain the big one. Instead they reckoned without Dallaglio, on his last appearance for Wasps, and his ability to make fairytales come true.
No. 6 -- Biarritz 19, Munster 23
(Final, Millennium Stadium, May 20, 2006)
After all the heartache, Munster were there at last -- champions of Europe. Peter Stringer sent the team, 65,000 fans in
Cardiff and hundreds of thousands more in Limerick, Cork, Tipperary and everywhere else into paradise with his historic, blindside try.
No. 7 -- Saracens 16, Munster 18
(Semi-final, Ricoh Stadium, April 27, 2008)
Desperately close-run thing with Saracens almost defying the odds and their great warhorse of a flanker, Richard Hill, busting a gut in a brave but ultimately abortive attempt to end his career in the final at Twickenham. In the end, it hinged on a marginal penalty decision against Hill when he was trying to create the platform for Glen Jackson to drop a late winner.
No. 8 -- Northampton 31, Llanelli 28
(Semi-final, Madejski Stadium, May 7, 2000)
The first of three losing semis for the Scarlets and probably the cruellest one of all. The tie was about to move into extra-time when a needless penalty was all the excuse Paul Grayson needed to put the Saints into the final against Munster which they proceeded to win against all the odds.
No. 9 -- London Irish 15, Toulouse 21
(Semi-final, Twickenham, April 26, 2008)
Another unfancied English Premiership rattling the mightiest club in Europe. How Toulouse survived will remain one of the mysteries of the competition.
No. 10 -- Pontypridd 29, Brive 29
(Pool stage, Sardis Road, September 27, 1997).
Wonderful stuff from the valley club which set them up for the explosive return and the eventful renewal of hostilities in the town centre that evening which has made Le Bar Toulzac part of European folklore.
Book your tickets for the Heineken Cup semi-finals Cardiff Blues v Leicester Tigers at the Millennium Stadium.
