Contepomi's Stop-Go Try

They may have lost again, but Leinster's mercurial outhalf Felipe Contepomi produced a staggering moment of improvisation to score their second try against the Ospreys. This camera angle doesn't actually catch the physics-defying change of direction as well as the normal angle did, but you get the idea.

Munster Will Be Back; Leinster Need More Than Backs

In the end, you know what the strangest thing was? Watching the two Irish sides playing out the dying minutes beaten; scrabbling for consolatory scores as if trying to put a better look on the thing. No last minute heartbreak, no death-throe excitement, no miracle magic. Just two well beaten teams, going through those motions that every such team does.

That was one strange thing. Another was the feeling, for once, of being extras in someone else's movie. Where once Munster's story was the compelling narrative, on Friday Stradey Park was the backdrop to Llanelli's epic tale. Where Leinster's tragi-comedy was once again re-run, Wasps' heroic bandits held the greater dramatic interest.

Watching the scenes at the various quarter-finals throughout the weekend, one must hope again that the problems which imperil this tournament can be somehow resolved (even though the fear remains that the organisational differences throughout the different nations make the current disagreements in England and France inevitable).

In all four grounds that hosted quarter-finals, the charged atmosphere of collective desire that we've seen so often steaming from the Thomond terraces was replicated. It was almost as if, with that transfixing yarn of Munster's quest at an end, there was space to see that same base passion elsewhere.

Undoubtedly, Stradey Park's comparison with its Friday night visitors' famous home was an obvious one: the tight, heaving ground, the baying local hordes, right down to the sight of an stoppable red force at work. Munster will have understood what happened to them, then.

Sure, the limitations of Munster's attack, the absence of Paul O'Connell and Shaun Payne, O'Gara in a funk - these things can be talked about. But men in the mood that Alix Popham, Dafydd James, Stephen Jones and Regan King were never going to be denied on Friday. Munster will accept that, and will return again.

Leinster's horrible performance against Wasps is less easy to put down to forces of nature. The result was a triumph for Shaun Edwards and his blitz defence, and director of rugby Ian McGeechan will place it alongside Scotland's Grand Slam-sealing win over England in 1990 and the 1997 Lions campaign in his hefty portfolio of success.

Leinster were outdone in tactics and in spirit. The Wasps defence, teetering constantly on offside and staring into the whites of the Leinster backs' eyes, drew no convincing response from the supposed magicians for European rugby. It was almost as if Leinster refused to lower themselves to devising a counteraction to Wasps' tactic, relying on the purity of their method to conquer all.

Brian O'Driscoll's absence, however, is one that no team built around him can carry, as was proven for the second time this year. Let's hope it's not a lesson we must accept threefold come the autumn. Not only did O'Driscoll's loss allow Wasps to focus totally on strangling Leinster at the 10 and 12 axis, but also, O'Driscoll's powerful rucking was desperately missed at the breakdown, where the English side - Tom Rees' star continues in the ascendant - turned ball over with ease.

By the time Leinster began to pass up tackles like bloated diners dismissing the dessert trolley, the pall of defeat had already descended. That Leinster were outscored 22-3 while a man up illustrates the crumbling of belief that affected the Irish side. It doesn't even do to harp on about Leinster being let down by their forwards, as Stephen Keogh, Trevor Hogan and Bernard Jackman were probably their most impressive performers.

No, Leinster were beaten everywhere: on the bench, on the field, in their heads and in their hearts.

For all their brilliance, they seem further away than ever.

Heineken Cup Review: Hard Road Ahead

The announcement of the Irish squad today for the first Six Nations match against Wales on Sunday week draws a natural line under Heineken Cup matters and focuses attention on the springtime soirée about to ensue. Albeit the provinces plod on with Magners League fixtures in the midst of the international hoopla, the top players are, of course, spirited away to be rubbed nightly in papaya and honey balm, wrapped in silk sheets then rocked to sleep by the sound of lute lullabies.

Before all that a timely moment, then, to survey their exploits thus far in the Grand Papa of club competitions. And my, what a confused and conflicting scene we are presented with, full of giddy backslapping one moment then fear and loathing the next.

NOTHING'S GONNA STOP US.....NOW
This season's pool stages seemed bipolar in nature, all three of the Irish provinces vascillating from Marlon Brando to Marlon from Emmerdale within six matches.

There was obviously enough good stuff in there to help (on top of the Autumn international successes) put a jaunty spring in our World Cup year step.

Ulster's demolition of Toulouse in the first round seemed to point to great things, suggesting that a Third Way was about to present itself between the red and blue of Ireland's hitherto dominant ideologies.

With Ulster's 1999 success in the tournament generally accompanied with an asterisk - "note: no English teams participated in this season's competition" - was this, with a tough pack steered by General Humphreys at outhalf and youthful promise in the backs, the province staking a rightful claim to contender status?

Leinster's drop dead gorgeous attacking potential was demonstrated against Gloucester at home, then fulfilled against Edinburgh at Donnybrook, a fantastic display of a 15-man game, admittedly against a team whose interest in the fixture was mild, and certainly not prolonged.

But it was the gutsy win in Agen that augured best for Leinster, a courageous and hard-fought victory which seemed to suggest that the flibbertigibbets were all grown up, thanks to the introduction by Keogh and Hogan of foul-humoured Munsterness into the pack.

Munster, we said, were 'savvy'. 'Experienced'. 'Nous' was mentioned. So too 'smarts'. The smuggling of a win from Welford Road was the best moment, a triumph of nerve in the face of alarming reversals in the scrum which would only be properly punished at the end of the pool stages.

ITS THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
The word 'Ulster' now accompanies in many dictionaries of modern usage, the phrase 'flattering to deceive'. The trip to Llanelli was seen as the reckoning, the revelation of whether Ulster were anything but home-town heroes.

Defeat at Stradey Park, in a game in which the province never got a foothold, was deflating, and the rest of the group offered only ignominy: a loss to the Welsh side at Fortress Ravenhill, and the fact that the fight between an Ulster supporter and Trevor Brennan was the only meaningful contest in which the province were involved on the last day.

For Leinster, a silly, maddening loss to Edinburgh suggested a lack of focus, but the loss to Gloucester was more depressing. A foul night in January did not help, but the sense of lack of control was all-pervasive, the conditions preventing Leinster from maximising, as they usually do, their inferior percentage of possession. The questions will not go away.

Still, we can live with Leinster's foibles, due to familiarity. The decimation of the Munster set-piece in defeat by Leicester at Thomond Park (the shock of it! Losing at Thomond, and on a good, dirty oul night too!) was the most worrying sight of all, even if it had been coming. Leicester tossed the Munster pack around like a plastic bag in a gale, the scrum especially being ransacked.

DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER
Away quarter-finals, the old question marks arising, Biarritz determined, Leicester rejuvenated, Llanelli flying....will the trophy so bumped and boozed around the south-west this last eight months or so be leaving our shores?

With the Six Nations to come first, clairvoyancy for the Heineken Cup is ill-advised until the body count is in. The absence of an O'Gara or a Contepomi (admittedly not playing in the Six Nations) would be almost terminal for either side.

Still I expect at least one of them to win their way to a semi-final, and will state that it is not beyond both. Munster do not have a great record in Wales, that day in May notwithstanding, but will not fear Llanelli. And Wasps is not the worst draw for Leinster either, whatever about the obstacle posed by their blitz defence.

But they're both strong opponents, and at home. With potential semi-finals away also, an Irish win this year would be even more hard-wrought than the momentous one of 2006.

You Too Can Love Leinster

Two things which illustrate why more people don't just absolutely adore Leinster's rugby team (who are playing possibly the aesthetically finest rugby seen this side of a Fijian Sevens blitz). The Dubliner magazine (they of last year's hilarious 'satirical' feature on how Tiger Woods missus was some sort of filthy porn star, a joke which Woods failed to get) ran with a front page feature on "how Brian O'Driscoll made Leinster the hippest rugby team in Europe."

Now, rugby has undoubtedly come on a bit in recent years, but for the love of God, hip? The word is against the very nature of the sport. And it will take a lot more than O'Driscoll fluttering around some trendy Dublin bars and Hooky and Popey wearing jeans on the telly to make it so. Hip is a performance art 'happening' in a Manhattan loft featuring two Brazilian transexuals reciting Ginsberg's Howl backwards. Not fifteen men climbing over each other in mud. Although when you put it like that....

Secondly, this Allez les Bleus business. Yes, very funny. You went over to France, and demonstrating that you were educated, multilingual types fond of a little deligtful irony, appropriated the chant that amounts to the French Olé Olé. Sure, and when your team's back is against the wall and they're defending for their lives, they'll want to hear you snorting out a delicate play on cross-cultural sporting mores.

So that's why, despite the poetry of their rugby - Saturday's hammering of Edinburgh being their magnum opus so far - many people would still rather invest their good wishes and support in the cause of the stout yeomen of Munster, with their set-piece squeezes and monstrous mauls.

Which is a damn shame.

Surely, for rugby as a sport, the success of Leinster in this season's Heineken Cup would be an Astonishingly Good Thing. I cannot fathom any worthwhile argument to counter the rationale that any neutral should hope that Leinster's 'total' rugby (as a giddy Tony Ward repeatedly called it in commenatary on Saturday) brings them past the many sterner challenges of the coming months and to glory in Twickenham on May 20th.

The use of the phrase 'total rugby' is apposite, in this case. In the event that - as most sage observers fear - Leinster will meet some mean, nasty bruisers who slow down the ball, stick it up their jumpers and get into the faces of their brilliant runners, would not their defeat be the sport's equivalent of the heart-rending failure of the Dutch 'total football' team to fulfil their potential in the World Cup finals of 1974 and 1978?

Would it not be the harsh, chilling wind of reality blowing in the confirmation that, in sport, the butterfly will always be crushed on the wheel?

There is, of course, the argument of the sport's purists: that a well-executed maul is as pleasing to behold as any improvisational passing movement; that the real soul of the game exists in the tight, sinewy confrontations invisible to the eye, not the gallivanting in the loose that comes as a result of the hard work.

To me, this is like an accountant eulogising the beauty of an immaculate balance sheet. To other accountants, impressive; but I've just gone to put the kettle on.

In any event, the only right way to play any sport is the winning way. No team is obliged to entertain, no coach expected to put razzmatazz before results. But Leinster's stated aim is to do their job in the most pleasing way to the eye as possible. To use their skill as a means to the end of victory. When any team does that, they must be cherished and supported, and their brave quest championed by all neutrals.

As the cameras panned around Donnybrook in the latter stages of Saturday's win, I experienced a thaw in any iciness I may have felt for the province due to the nonsense of the Dubliner and the infernal Allez les Bleus. Looking at the well-fed, happy faces, several generations of the most affluent sector of Ireland's demographic, I thought: why not? Why shouldn't they be happy and content? It's not their fault they were born with opportunity. Haven't they worked hard, got their qualifications, made the best of things? Don't they have worries, fears, hang-ups?

And the killer: don't they deserve this team? And just because they have this team, why can't the rest of us love it too?

Heineken Stakes High For Irish Sides

Is it any wonder that the profile of rugby in Ireland seems to be inflating nearly as exponentially as my stomach is likely to over the coming weeks of mince pie and savoury party snack heaven.


Not only does the everyone-loves-a-winner factor mean that our strutting, gunslinging national team are the nation's darlings du jour, but also the scheduling of two crucial rounds of Heineken Cup group matches for just after the November internationals means that the sport's box office stars will continue to occupy our thoughts for another few weeks.


There will be more Heineken Cup in January, before the boozy city-break bonhomie of the Six Nations kicks in for six weeks, and then the concluding stages of the Europe's premier competition bring you up to May.


This means that rugby will be at the forefront of the minds of those fickle, low-attention- spanned scoundrels, the General Public, for a good eight months - not including the much dreaded summer tour to Argentina. Not bad going in the bustling marketplace that hawkers of top class sport inhabit.


What did rugby folk do before the Heineken Cup? Traipse around mucky club fields of a winter Saturday, shuffle along to an interpro or two, offering it up as penance for the indulgence of the springtime international debauchery to come. We live in no-guilt times now, of course, and can debase ourselves almost every weekend if we wish.

Anyhow, Munster are unlikely to debase themselves in these group stages at least, starting them as they have in the firm, businesslike manner of champions. They were inches away from losing against Leicester - the distance by which Ronan O'Gara's monstrous last gasp hoof cleared the bar - but seemed, even as they went behind in the game, to retain control of their destiny, rather like in the manner England manouevred their winning drop goal situation in the 2003 World Cup final.

That might be understating how close they came to losing, as, had Shane Jennings not offered dissent on the awarding of the crucial penalty, then the kick would have been out of even O'Gara's reach. Still, you'd kind of had fancied them to stick it in the corner and rumble over for a winner anyway.

Where Munster are now is confirmed in the stats: if they defeat Cardiff on Sunday they will match Leicester's record of 11 tournament wins in a row and go past the Tigers' record of 5 consecutive Heineken away wins. And then there are the 30 home wins on the trot.

Cardiff should be a tough one, although the Blues will have to deal with a whole different Munster proposition from that which they defeated in the Magners League in September. They will attack Munster with ball in hand from the breakdown through Martyn Williams and burly scrum half Mike Philips. Munster have more than enough class for this one however.

Leinster and Ulster are not bobbing along anywhere near as gracefully as Munster; both of them face must win games this weekend.

London Irish are already the makeweights in Ulster's tough group, and victory at the Madejski on Saturday will be seen as a prerequisite if hopes of a quarter final place are not unfounded. Not only that, but in this group every bonus point is a prisoner, and Ulster have to pick one up somewhere to make up for that spurned in the opening day win over Toulouse.

A big performance is needed and, with the ego-boost of international honours many of their players now have, they should have the confidence to it against an exiles side out of the running already.

Leinster too have no margin for error, against Agen. That frustrating defeat in Edinburgh felt like an unexpected stumble, but one that Leinster are all too capable of. They lack that drive and unity of purpose which Munster have, a deficit of practical know-how.

You can pretty much guarantee that Saturday's game at Lansdowne (the latest "last game" in the old ground, this time being the final Heineken Cup match - Christ, would someone knock the place down already) will be open and high scoring, given the presence on Agen's team of the exuberant Fijian winger Rupeni Caucaunibuca and on Leinster's of Ireland's dashing blades of the backline.

The good thing is, the more open the game, the better for Leinster, capable as they are of out-running most teams. The absence of out-half Felipe Contepomi, however, is bound to diminish them, and you worry for them a bit if they fall behind or find themselves misfiring creatively.

Will they be able to battle out a win? They'll have to.