Leinster lay down a marker
Whether you frame it either as Leinster ending a hoodoo or wave it away as paling in significance to their previous three meetings with La Rochelle, this much is objectively true: Leinster’s victory at Stade Marcel Deflandre this evening was mightily impressive.
La Rochelle would have salivated at the prospect of taking Leinster to their backyard for the first time and inflicting further trauma — both physical and psychological — on their tortured opponents. Instead, it’s Ronan O’Gara and co. who, for the first time in this rivalry, are left to lick their wounds and ponder their shortcomings.
The long and short of it is that to hold La Rochelle try-less in their own stadium is a serious feat of defence. And unlike last season’s final, it hardly resembled the Alamo, either. Leinster went after the European champions at source, destroying La Rochelle’s lineout and, failing that, firing a hand grenade into their lineout maul at every opportunity.
Leinster didn’t just survive the storm in the French southwest. In ruining La Rochelle’s plans and swallowing up everything that was thrown at them, they became the storm.
They’ll be satisfied to have answered at least some of the questions that would have been swirling around their heads for the last six months.
URC ≠ Best League
Leinster were one of only two URC teams to have won their Champions Cup opener. The other was the Bulls, who play at altitude on another continent and had an extra man for the last half hour against Saracens.
The URC’s next best result from eight games in Europe’s top tier was Munster’s draw with Bayonne, which made for the first time that the French club had avoided defeat away from home since a draw at Pau 12 months ago.
It’s, eh… Well, it’s just not great, is it?
One shouldn’t read too much into it yet, of course. It’s only one weekend. But if you have any kind of emotional stake in the development of the United Rugby Championship, you wouldn’t want to see another one like it any time soon.
Some of the fixtures were tough in fairness. Toulouse away. Bath away. Leicester away. Still, it was striking the extent to which several URC teams with ambitions of a European run — including three of the provinces — just looked undercooked in comparison to opposition from England and France.
Rumours of the Premiership’s demise have been greatly exaggerated
A fine weekend for England’s clubs was bookended by Northampton Saints’ dismantling of Glasgow at Fortress Scotstoun on Friday night and a sensational Harlequins upset of Stuart Lancaster’s Racing in Paris.
The pages in between read of Exeter Chiefs ambushing Toulon at home, Bath laying waste to Ulster, Bristol edging Lyon in a thriller, Sale battering Stade Francais, and Leicester Tigers baring their teeth against a talented Stormers side who pitched up properly at Welford Road but were sent packing with nothing to show for themselves.
Of the eight Premiership clubs in top-tier action this weekend, only Saracens — 13,000 kilometres away and another kilometre and a bit above sea level — failed to win.
A perception exists that, amid English rugby’s recent financial crisis, the Premiership has descended into some kind of tinpot league for insular fanatics. (This writer is as guilty as anyone of dismissing its overall quality).
This weekend will have disabused a lot of us of that notion.
It’s easy, too, to forget that three of last season’s quarter-finalists hailed from England and Exeter were only beaten by eventual champions La Rochelle in a Bordeaux semi-final.
You wouldn’t bet against a similar sequence of events unspooling this time around, with all eight English clubs seemingly invested in making it out of their respective pools.
Sarries away next weekend always reeked of a tough day for Connacht but Munster’s trip to Sandy Park, where they’re yet to beat Exeter after two meetings, looks a little bit more ominous tonight than it did yesterday morning.
Three provinces find themselves in holes
Well, let’s be honest about it. Leinster aside, that was an atrocious weekend from an Irish perspective.
If you didn’t see Connacht on Friday night against Bordeaux, here’s how bad they were: they made Donncha O’Callaghan genuinely angry during his punditry work on TNT Sports. Let that sink in for a second.
Ulster’s second-half collapse at Bath wasn’t quite so protracted but it was pronounced and punctuated by Johann van Graan’s Premiership highfliers in the final 15 minutes. In all honesty, they look like a team in bother — but then, they have before.
Munster were the only team of the three to actually score second-half points. They scored three. Their draw at home to Bayonne — who left several frontliners at home — felt decidedly like a defeat.
And the weekend as a whole felt decidedly deflating before Leinster ended their personal hell in La Rochelle.
In truth, Connacht and Ulster looked miles off the required pace at this level.
Munster were closer to the speed but with several key men injured, they were reminded that if they have to dip too far down into their depth chart, the requisite talent for Champions Cup rugby does not run infinite.
Rowntree’s men were made to pay especially for an obvious lack of power and overall quality in their front row, which was costly not only in the scrum but in several toothless nibbles at the Bayonne line. The respective absences of Jean Kleyn, RG Snyman and Edwin Edogbo were also glaring.
And it doesn’t get easier for any of them: the southern province head for Sandy Park to face an Exeter side with their tails up. Connacht visit a Saracens smarting from a bit of a lashing down in Pretoria. And Ulster host a Racing outfit who won’t take lightly the indignity of tonight’s home defeat.
Leinster, meanwhile, host England’s table-toppers Sale Sharks. It’s based on the performance of Leo Cullen’s side in La Rochelle rather than a flagrant disrespect of the Premiership that this feels like the most eminently winnable game of the four.
