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.

Six Nations Signs Off, Carney Signs On

It's been exhausting just watching it - can you imagine how the players feel?

For Ireland the normally intense Six Nations has had lashings and lashings of extra significance poured over it this year, whether it be the Croke Park melodrama, the Grand Slam chatter or the looming World Cup. The tournament has been utterly captivating, more so than ever perhaps, but after every game I feel like I've just come out of a ruck with Nathan Hines. A sleepy Magners League evening at the Sportsgrounds will be just the ticket after all this stress.

But once more unto the breach we go, and Ireland in with chance of the title on the last day. The sporting integrity of the tournament's climax is seriously wonky however, with France being able to quantify exactly what they need to do to retain the championship before they take the field against Scotland. Television dictates that all matches will be broadcast, so the simultaneous playing of thefinal games cannot happen, but at the risk of souring the grapes before they're even plucked from the vine, it's just not fair.

Of course Ireland first have to actually beat Italy, thoughts of hefty points totals being unwise against a team who, the opening weekend apart, have had a great tournament so far. Ireland will always toil against the Italians, whose powerful pack love to rough up their green-shirted equivalents.

Both packs will be missing talismanic figures, in Ireland's case the inspiration of Paul O'Connell and in Italy's their multi-functional flanker, Mauro Bergamasco. O'Connell's loss to Ireland is unquantifiable, given that Ireland's only convincing performance of the tournament was also the only one in which O'Connell played to his own celestial standards.

But Bergamasco's absence will hit Italy just as hard. He is one of their few genuinely top class talents, and is absolutely key to getting his team moving with the generous portion of ball their pack generally win. Without him they will still be strong up front, but their actual threat to Ireland's line is severely diminished.

Ireland's try-scoring threat is usually one of their best features, but was strangely blunt at Murrayfield. A back-line which is usually breathlessly fluid was notable for more clumsy fumbling than the back wall of a teenage disco.

The Scotland game also highlighted question marks over Ireland's lack of a genuine finisher. Denis Hickie's tackle on Chris Paterson in the first half, after which he sprang to his feet and turned the ball over, was one of the few moments of excellence displayed last Saturday. But the Leinster winger isn't a world-class finisher anymore, injuries and age having robbed him of the necessary explosiveness, as was demonstrated in the second half at Murrayfield.

Enter Brian Carney. Is it utterly fanciful to speculate that Munster new signing is not just intended to boost the province's Heineken Cup bid, but also as another prospective big gun for the Irish back line?

Although Munster supporters have been on tenterhooks all week since the rumours of the former Great Britain rugby league star's imminent signature started, there's been plenty of caution in the red ranks too. After being burned before with Christian Cullen, whose injuries have prevented him from ever displaying the awesome talent of his youth in a Munster jersey, scepticism is understandable. After all, Carney is 30 years old and has only one day of pre-season training in six months behind him.

But there is no doubt that Carney is the real deal, a top class league player who scored 16 tries in 26 NRL games in Australia (the sport's strongest competition) on top of his earlier successes with Wigan. Also, as a winger, he plays in the position most suited to an easy transition to union, Jason Robinson and Wendell Sailor being the proof of that.

It seems a monumental ask to expect Carney to descend fully-formed into Munster and Ireland's massive battles of the next months, but his pedigree suggests he has a chance.

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.

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.