Next weekend’s final round of Heineken Cup matches have relatively little at stake. Most of the groups have been tied up by now, with the favourites comfortably through. Toulon, Munster, Toulouse, Leinster and Clermont Auvergne will top their groups, without doubt. All are qualified, save for Leinster who need a losing bonus point at home to Ospreys, who are bottom of the pool. The only pool with something real to be resolved is Ulster’s, where the Nordies face Leicester in a winner takes almost all battle to top the pool. Ulster, though, can lose and still qualify.
By our reckoning, it’s the third year in a row in which there hasn’t been all that much to get excited about in Round Six. Time was almost everything was up for grabs in the final round of fixtures. Sky’s ‘as it stands’ top eight would fluctuate by the minute as the action played out across twelve cities in Europe. The Leinster half of WoC has happy-ish memories of getting soaked to the skin in the RDS watching Leinster labour to a 12-3 win over Edinburgh, while nervously receiving reports from the south of France where Castres were hanging on to a lead against Wasps, before drying out in Crowe’s watching (Mud-)Bath draw 3-3 with Toulouse on a pudding of a pitch at the Rec. The other half recalls Biarritz trying to stick it up the jumper to close out the game in Ravers, only to give iHumph a last opportunity to put Ulster through to the knockouts for the first time in 12 years, in the 79th minute of the final pool game – he delivered.
The final shakedown of the pools akways seemed to go down to the wire. And, while we can’t quite confirm, we have heard rumour that some of Munster’s pools down the years occasionally went into the final round unresolved.
But in this season, and the two before it, most of the major issues have been decided before the final denoument. Last year, once Saracens beat Racing Metro in the fifth round, the make-up of the eight qualifiers was more or less set in stone, and in the previous year, once Connacht beat Harlequins on the final friday night, the remaining games had little import.
So why the lack of drama this year, and in the last couple of seasons? It appears that the middle order teams have fallen away from the big boys, for whatever reason. If we think about the consistently competitive teams of the noughties, Wasps and Stade have fallen away (almost for good) as the big boys retired, Biarritz’ and Perpignan’s power game doesn’t quite cut the moutarde any more, Ospreys’ Galacticos have buggered off and the Scarlets team of the early noughties faded away. That’s six tough pool draws who are much easier meat these days … if they are even in the tournament at all. It takes a while to build up the muscle memory to get the HEC knockout stage level, but when you get there, you become good at knowing what it takes to stay there.
This year, none of the new breed of middleweights really put it up to top seeds, at least not in terms of accumulating points across the five rounds.
- Harlequins were beaten home and away by Clermont, and threw in a careless defeat to Scarlets
- Saracens talk big but when it came down to it, Toulouse swatted them away at home, and held on for a win away. They are likely to qualify as runners-up though.
- Gloucester were easily dealt with by Munster in both ties, and somehow lost at home to Edinburgh
- Perpignan took a French approach to the tournament. They almost beat Munster which might have changed things but couldn’t see it out when victory beckoned
- Northampton had a typically see-sawing campaign, winning admirably in Dublin after a hammering at home. But losing in Castres sealed their fate
- Big things were expected of Montpellier, but they were tactically outmanoeuvred by Ulster, and with that they gave up
- Castres were never likely to accumulate many away wins, but they did put it up to Leinster in the RDS
One team that did man up and perform above their level was Cardiff. They beat Toulon at home and performed creditably in the away match, a touch unlucky to give up a bonus point to three penalty tries when they had players in the bin. They also managed a hard-earned win away to Glasgow and if they can finish off with a win at home to Exeter, they could qualify for the Amlin. But for all that, they were never likely to contend the leadership of the group with Toulon. Another is Connacht, who won their two games against the mighty Zebre, put it up to Saracens at home and of course, won famously in Toulouse.
This year’s pool winners will all, almost certainly, do so with five wins in the bag. It looks likely that Munster will finish with a whopping 23 points and yet have to make do with an away quarter-final. Holy smokes! Five wins used to almost guarantee a home quarter-final, and four wins and enough bonus points would get you through the pool as winners.
The strange thing about it all is that none of the pool winners have played especially well in spite of the huge match-points totals. They’ve almost qualified in second gear. On the face of it, Toulouse, Leicester, Munster and Leinster look a pale shadow of former vintages. Ulster have huffed and uffed through most of their games. Toulon have squad depth to beat the band, but they happy to rely on their pack’s gargantuan hugeness and take few risks. Clermont, once again, look like the best team in the tourney, but even they threw in a silly defeat to a hopeless Racing Metro side.
It looks to us as if where the big sides are superior is in managing to do just enough, knowing how to get the job done, ekeing out the win in a clutch game. Resilience and composure in the white heat of battle count for an awful lot these days. Munster are masters at it this season, and indeed, pretty much every season. Indeed, in the match on Saturday, after an hour’s play we tweeted to the effect that Munster had Gloucester’s number, and now just needed to get the necessary scores to put them away. To the surprise of nobody, within the next ten minutes they did exactly that, putting another 10 points on the board to pull away. Put simply, they know how to win matches.
Leicester have saved match-points in the dying minutes of two of their away games: a vital losing bonus point in Ravenhill and a last-ditch winning try in Montpellier. Leinster found themselves in a right old pickle in Castres, but experience counts for a lot and in the end they were able to get themselves back in the match and pull away to win. Would, say, Northampton or Harlequins – two good teams with aspirations of joining the elite – have had the composure and self-belief to claw their way back in such a position? Doubtful.
The old cliches about every point being crucial and maximum intensity being required haven’t even applied. Almost all the pool winners have thrown in one daft defeat to a team vastly inferior to them. It hasn’t stopped them having their quarter final place wrapped up by week 5.
Whiff of Cordite 