Peter Jackson: Leinster's KO of La Rochelle one for the ages
Harry In Between At Side's Dan Victory Murphy/sportsfile La His And The Champions Of Stadium Investec Aviva Match Sheehan The Final Cup Rochelle Leinster Leinster Respect: Picture: After Quarter
On the Richter Scale of champions chinned in the defence of their title, Leinster’s rocking of La Rochelle surpasses every knock-out in the ring of European rugby.
Not as indecently swift as Mike Tyson’s 91-second demolition of Michael Spinks in Atlantic City during the summer of 1988 but, as an exercise in cumulative punishment, it stands as the most emphatic beating inflicted upon any holder of rugby’s super-heavyweight club crown.
Nor is it an exaggeration to draw an analogy between the ruthless quality of the Irish avengers and arguably the most one-sided global heavyweight fight decided on points over 15 rounds: Muhammad Ali’s pummelling of Ernie ‘The Octopus’ Terrell at the Houston Astrodome in the winter of 1967.
Leinster effectively began settling their series of losing scores a long way inside the distance, some feat considering the double champions’ mastery of the old rope-a-dope trick: an uncanny capacity for absorbing severe punishment, then delivering a telling blow of their own as they did at the end of the first half.
Far from signalling a recovery implausible even by La Rochelle’s standards, it turned out to be one final act of defiance, a parting shot at superior opponents. Leinster, raising their intensity to a level hitherto untouched, counted them out with a quarter of the match still to be played.
Everything had been settled bar the size of the victory. Leinster made do with 27 points unaware that the number had assumed historic proportions. No holder of Europe’s blue-riband club prize had ever been stripped of the trophy by such a margin.
In doing so, Leinster had beaten their own record, set at the same venue two years ago when another European champion from France, Toulouse, lost a one-way semi-final by 23 points.
Twelve months before that, Leo Cullen & Co. ended Exeter’s reign by 12 points in a quarter-final. Three years earlier, back at The Aviva, they knocked Saracens off their European perch in another quarter-final by one point fewer.
Ronan O’Gara took La Rochelle’s exit on the chin, not that Leinster’s all-court supremacy left him any option. He had no need to inquire as to how his players felt because their fate would have reminded him of a similarly traumatic experience of his own.
After all, hadn’t O’Gara been through exactly the same wringer against the same opponent in the same city when Munster surrendered their treasured title at Croke Park 15 long years ago; Leinster strolled into their first final by 19 points with tries from threequarters of their threequarters (Brian O’Driscoll, Luke Fitzgerald, Gordon D’Arcy)?
Soon they will be back at the GAA’s steepling cathedral in a semi-final for the first time since, once more in sight of their ultimate goal. If the organisers make the prices affordable, the public response on both sides of the Irish Sea could go close to matching the all-time record of 82,208 from 2009.
Knocking out the holders is all well and good but it counts for little if Leinster then suffer the same fate, as has happened in each of the last three seasons. In being held responsible for all three, La Rochelle have wrought enough havoc to last Leinster for the remainder of the century.
Now that they have finally got rid of their Franco-Irish nemesis for the time being, Ireland’s last hope will settle for nothing less than ending a run of one European title in 12 years without further delay.
Maybe it’s about to happen at long last, that Europe’s two most successful contenders will meet in the final for the first time. It is one of the tournament’s enduring mysteries why Toulouse and Leinster have yet to get that far simultaneously.
A weekend when the pair followed each other into the semi-finals will have left neutrals the world over believing they will both go all the way. All but two of the 28 finals have featured different combinations with just the two repeats: La Rochelle and Leinster over the last two seasons, Toulon and Clermont (2013, 2015).
European Cup finals from 1996 (winners first named)
Anglo- Franco (8):
Brive-Leicester, Bath-Brive, Leicester-Stade Franais, Wasps-Toulouse, Toulon-Saracens, Saracens-Racing, Saracens-Clermont, Exeter-Racing.
Franco-Irish (6):
Ulster-Colomiers, Munster-Biarritz, Munster-Toulouse, Leinster-Racing, La Rochelle-Leinster (twice).
All French (6):
Toulouse-Perpignan, Toulon-Stade Francais, Toulouse-Biarritz, Toulon-Clermont (twice), Toulouse-La Rochelle.
Anglo-Irish (5):
Northampton-Munster, Leicester-Munster, Leinster-Leicester, Leinster-Northampton, Saracens-Leinster.
Franco-Welsh (1):
Toulouse-Cardiff.
All Irish (1):
Leinster-Ulster.
All English (1):
Wasps v Leicester.
Ulster’s perennial failure to make an impression on Europe provided the background to a spat between one of the north’s better players and a veteran of their last team to reach a Heineken Cup final.
Stephen Ferris, part of the back row when Leinster won the only all-Ireland Heineken final in 2012, took to social media with a comparison between Ulster now and Ulster of 10 years ago. Ferris had merely wanted to stir ‘a trivial debate’ over the respective merits of losing quarter-final teams ten years apart.
Stuart McCloskey, one of the rare breed of Ulsterman good enough to have played a part in Ireland’s Six Nations triumph, considered it almost too trivial for words, dismissing Ferris’ message as ‘something a 12-year-old would do.’ During the life of 12-year-olds born the world over after Ulster last reached a final, their record since is not so much dismal as pitiful: four losing quarter-finals in twelve seasons. Put another way, they have spent two-thirds of those seasons either failing to make it out of the pool stage or coming a cropper at the Round of 16.
As if that’s not bad enough, they have been found seriously wanting in the Champions’ Cup on four occasions, shipping 37 points at Bath, 48 against Toulouse at Ravenhill, 47 at Harlequins and now 53 at Clermont – currently the 11th-best team in France.
The Mighty Quins may have been a touch fortuitous in making their first semi-final but then fortune tends to favour the brave. When it comes to going for broke, nobody does it quite as spectacularly as a club whose list of presidents include the ennobled ex-England captain Lord Wakefield and the son of former Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman who led the Gunners to their first two League titles in the 1930’s.
No club dares run as many risks week in, week out as Quins. They score tries from every position and, on occasions when they get a touch too adventurous, concede them from anywhere and everywhere as happened when Saracens hit them for 50 in front of 61,214 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Should they fail to clear the one hurdle standing between them and a return to the hi-tech venue for the final, it won’t be for any lack of tries. Their last seven matches have generated 65 (36 for, 29 against) and 444 points (237 for, 207 against), an average of nine tries and 63 points per match.
Seven days after wiping the floor with Saracens, Bordeaux were taken aback, and to an extent apart, by Quins’ sheer audacity in daring to create six converted tries. The French contenders finally matched them try-for-try deep into red-clock time only for Maxime Lucu to send his conversion spiralling a foot wide of the near upright.
As a match, it was magnificent, not far from my all-time favourite, a semi-final from 20 years ago: Munster 32 Wasps 37 in front of 49,000 at Lansdowne Road.
As a Harlequin of some stature, Ugo Monye couldn’t conceal his delight at the London club’s thrilling win in Bordeaux. Presenting the post-match reaction on TNT Sports, he dismissed any question that the scoring pass for Tyrone Green’s late try, then pointed out that Quins had made it despite injuries to Joe Marler and Danny Care. No mention of Bordeaux’s injured pair, Damian Penaud and Mathieu Jalibert.
Whatever happened to objectivity…?
At least one TNT pundit did put his head above the parapet and speak out about the Bulls’ turning up at Northampton minus as many as 11 Springboks.
"It’s undeniably underwhelming,’’ former England and Saracens prop David Flatman told viewers in a suitably no-bull tone. "Let’s not pretend it isn’t. It’s not the dream we were sold (when South African teams entered Europe). People buy tickets and the top guys are not here. I wish they were." Before herding his Bulls back on eight different planes to Pretoria in readiness for Saturday’s URC biggie against Munster, head coach Jake White addressed the Northampton players in their dressing-room.
"I want to congratulate you guys," he said. ‘’It looks like something special’s going on here. I really hope you guys go the whole hog and get the double (Premiership and Champions’ Cup).’’
15 Romain Buros (Bordeaux) 14 Juan Cruz Mallia (Toulouse) 13 Robbie Heshaw (Leinster) 12 Nicholas Depoortere (Bordeaux) 11 James Lowe (Leinster) 10 Ross Byrne (Leinster) 9 Jamison Gibson-Park (Leinster) 1 Fin Baxter (Harlequins) 2 Dan Sheehan (Leinster) 3 Will Collier (Harlequins) 4 Joe McCarthy (Leinster) 5 Alex Coles (Northampton) 6 Ryan Baird (Leinster) 7 Will Evans (Harlequins) 8 Jack Willis (Toulouse)