As the Super Rugby competition trundles towards its mid-term break at the end of May, the northern hemisphere season reaches its climax over the next four weeks.
League playoffs and titles are up for grabs across the Top 14, Pro 12, English Premiership, and of course, the European Cup. This weekend will sort out the two finalists who will walk out at Twickenham, host of this year’s final, on May 19.
On Saturday evening, 40,000 Ulster fans will take the M1 south to Lansdowne Road to watch their province take on the Scottish region Edinburgh. The unique dual-country province has been edging closer and closer in recent seasons to regaining their glory of 1999, when they first won the trophy.
Led by Johann Muller, the highly popular South African lock, and Rory Best, the homegrown Ireland Six Nations captain, Ulster are a team transformed this season. They have taken some prized scalps along the way to the semi-finals, beating the likes of Leicester Tigers and Clermont Auvergne.
Ruan Piennar, Pedrie Wannenburg, and NZ’s World Cup winner John Afoa have helped galvanise a team of current Ireland internationals and wannabes such as Craig Gilroy, Paul Marshall, Dan Tuohy, and the electric Nevin Spence, the next Brian O’Driscoll in some people’s eyes.
They’ve scored more tries than even Leinster in the Pro 12 this season, and they know how to close out games against the most dogged teams away from home, as they proved in the quarter-final defeat of Munster at Thomond Park.
If Ulster’s success has raised a few eyebrows, then their opposition, Edinburgh, led by former Connacht coach Michael Bradley, have caused many more to splutter into their beer with their presence at this stage of the tournament.
They topped their pool group, and then took on the four-time French champs Toulouse in their quarter final.
And won. Convincingly.
Bradley, learning from his dog days at the Irish development province, has focused his team and top players on the European title this season. Such cynical player management, (Edinburgh are second from bottom in the Pro 12, but will still get one of the two Scottish spots for next season’s Heineken cup) has led to a lot of calls from English clubs to change the qualification system.
Right now, Bradley doesn’t care. His team’s success, and Glasgow’s success in the league (they’ll likely qualify for the playoffs next weekend), have given a much-needed boost to Scottish rugby, with the same numbers of fans travelling to Dublin this weekend that the national team gets. The cash tills are ringing, and the SRU are smiling.
Edinburgh are no cannon fodder. On form, and on song, their fast off-loading game has caught many a team napping.
Scrum half Mike Blair and top try-scorer Tim Visser are just two players that Ulster will have to watch if they are to make it to their second final.
On paper, the northern province should win, but don’t bank against Bradley’s Boys making it to Twickers.
On Sunday, some would argue that the real final will take place, with the winner of the match likely to go on and lift the trophy.
Two-time winners Leinster will be looking for back-to-back cups, and their third in four seasons, to become one of the greats of the European Cup, eclipsing their fierce rivals Munster, and the perennial English league champions Leicester.
Their opposition are arguably the best team in European rugby at the moment, Vern Cotter’s Clermont Auvergne. Truly a cosmopolitan French club, their overall squad is packed with multi-country talent – French, Samoan, Welsh, South African, New Zealand, Georgian, Fijian, Canadian, Scottish, Australian and Italian players.
In their match-day squad, it might be easier to play ‘spot the Frenchman’ from their line-up of L Byrne; S Sivivatu, A Rougerie, W Fofana, J Malzieu; B James, M Parra; L Faure, B Kayser, D Zirakashvili, J Cudmore, N Hines, J Bonnaire, A Lapandry, E Vermeulen, T Paulo, V Debaty, D Kotze, J Pierre, J Bardy, L Radoslavjevic , R King, J Buttin.
In contrast, Leinster, have just three players drawn from two other countries, with one of them, Richardt Strauss, due to be Irish qualified this autumn. On the bench, Nathan White and Heinke van der Merwe complete the foreign cohort.
The match-up has lots of promise with some commentators billing it as the likely game of the season.
That might be a bit premature given the quality and tension of some of the matches to date, and the potential for such an important match to descend into a no-holds-barred struggle with one penalty shot making the difference.
Leinster are short-odds favourites, and with Brad Thorn joining them on short-term loan to back up injuries, their defensive organisation and attacking élan out wide have the defending champions being lauded from all sides. They have lost once in their last 25 matches and will break their interprovincial rival Munster’s record of 13 successive Heineken Cup wins if they make it to Twickenham.
But the French do nonchalance better than anyone else, and as recent Top 14 winners, and joint leaders with Toulouse this season, Clermont are in no mood to be cowed by their Irish opponent’s daunting record.
Since 2006, Clermont have lost just one Heineken Cup match in France. They’ve won 42 games in a row at home. They simply bulldozed Saracens out of the way in their quarter-final by a 20-point margin.
Aurélien Rougerie, their iconic captain, says they “simply cannot be beaten” if they arrive with their big-game hat on.
There’s another twist in the tale, in that the coaches of the two teams know each other very well. New Zealanders Vern Cotter and Joe Schmidt worked together a couple of years ago at Clermont, and helped the team win their first Bouclier de Brennus in over 100 years.
The two men remain friends and have the utmost respect for each other, texting best wishes in the run-up to the match.
Schmidt, since he left his master’s side, has shown himself to be a very smart apprentice. Leinster have beaten Clermont four times out of five in the EC, most recently in the quarter-final in Dublin 2010, when Brock James’s nerve melted at the tee and cost his team the game.
This match-up on ‘neutral’ territory in Bordeaux should be quite the decider in who gets the coaching bragging rights.
“Both teams will be very strong and I just think the biggest winner is going to be European rugby,” says Schmidt. “It’s going to be a hell of a battle.”
Schmidt has the knowledge of his opponents, but Clermont are not short of having a virtual spy in the Leinster camp, with former lock from Wagga Wagga, Nathan Hines, lining out for Les Jaunards this season, alongside the Canadian hard-man Jamie Cudmore. Brad Thorn and Leo Cullen are relishing the prospect.
Except for Toulouse, no other French team has won the Heineken Cup since Brive in 1997. The Irish provinces have reigned supreme since 2006, with Munster and Leinster taking four of the five cups since then. Leinster are determined to be the top dogs, but the “gálacticos” of Clermont intend to make their centenary year in France something special – double special.
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