RUGBY HEINEKEN CUP DRAW:SCANNING ACROSS the pools, and although Ulster might be disagree, it could certainly have been a good deal worse. A cursory glance at Pools Three or Five would certainly send a shudder of relief to all those who avoided them.
In three-time winners and serial quarter-final qualifiers Toulouse (12 times), this year’s semi-final victims of the penalty shoot-out Cardiff, Leinster’s quarter-final victims Harlequins, and Sale, Pool Five is probably the front-runner for that tired title Group Of Death, or, perhaps fittingly given the presence of Sharks, the Pool of Death.
Leinster’s opponents will provide a degree of freshness which can often be lacking given the largely unchanged cast list which pops up in the Heineken Cup. London Irish will probably be the marquee fixture for the champions at the RDS. The sides have never met competitively, likewise Brive, the 1997 champions.
Indeed, London Irish have only met Ulster in the competition, exchanging home wins in the group stages two seasons ago. The London club proved its mettle in Europe by reaching the semi-finals two seasons ago and the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup last season after a double in the pool stages over Connacht.
Finalists in the English Premiership at Twickenham last month, when they left a first title behind them in a one-point defeat, Bob Casey’s team appear to be upwardly mobile. And they will be hosted by Munster and Leinster as part of their pre-season preparations at the end of August.
Although Brive are from the fourth tier of seeds, they would appear to be eminently the most preferable of the six French sides which the champions might have drawn. They squeezed into the sixth and last French qualifying place in the Top 14 on the last day, when Andy Goode’s 75th-minute penalty earned a 19-all draw at Bourgoin while Bayonne – who had been in the top six all season – were denied a bonus point in their 31-27 win over Stade Francais by Mauro Bergamasco’s 70th-minute try, despite outscoring the Parisians by four tries to two.
With their plethora of English signings (Frankie Sheahan is not, after all, expected to join them) Brive have some way to go to recapture their former glories, as when their Christophe Lamaison-inspired side dismantled Leicester by 28-9 in the final in 1997. Nor, on the evidence of the last two seasons, are the Scarlets the Euro force they used to be.
Munster’s probable main rivals in Pool One, Perpignan, are the newly-crowned French champions, and they have also beaten Munster twice at Stade Aime Giral as well as losing to them three times at Thomond Park and Musgrave Park. Again Munster’s trip to Catalonia looks daunting, and Northampton’s form at Franklins Gardens is also strikingly good.
The recent short-term acquisition of Dan Carter was also a measure of Perpignan’s ambition but, traditionally, they have not been a force in Europe on the scale of Toulouse, or even Stade Francais or Biarritz. Northampton qualified via the back door of the Challenge Cup at the expense of Wasps, while it cannot do Munster any harm that they drew one of the Italian qualifiers, Treviso.
What Ulster would give for the presence of one of the Italian sides. Instead, following the sudden departure of Matt Williams, their fourth-seeded opponents will be Edinburgh, also looking for a coach. The same can probably be said of Bath – who could be anything after their end-of-season travail and whom Ulster have never met – and Stade Francais, whom Ulster have beaten four times in five encounters at Ravenhill as well as losing to them four times in Paris.
