The Thomond Park spectators exhorted their players to stand up and fight before the start of Saturday’s Champions Cup match against Leicester, a year after many of them stood up and walked out as the Tigers completed the first leg of a European double over the Irish province.
This year Leicester sat down and capitulated, not for the first time on the road in the last three seasons. Their director of rugby Richard Cockerill afterwards pointed out that his club, like Munster, had had ups and downs in a decade when the landscape of the game changed.
He was referring to the growing financial muscle of many clubs in the Top 14 and in the Premiership, where the leading three in the table have built their ascent on debt. The likes of Leicester and their east Midlands rivals Northampton – whose season is in danger of disintegrating after George North’s treatment after an apparent head injury and Dylan Hartley’s third red card in as many years against Leinster – are finding that living off their means, even when they are increasing, means they are falling behind those nourished by wealthy backers.
Leicester are, by some way, the best supported club in England with an average crowd nearly three times that of Saracens, but their response to losing their dominance is to look to recruit rather than nurture. They only supplied two players to England’s match-day squads in the autumn series, Ben Youngs and Dan Cole, although Manu Tuilagi would probably have made it three had he been fit and firing. Like Northampton’s current internationals, Hartley, Courtney Lawes and Tom Wood, they have been around for a while (Tamana Harrison was a New Zealand import).
Other than Ellis Genge, signed from Bristol, Leicester have no young players pushing for a place in the 23; injuries have given the 20-year old George Worth, a season-ticket holder at Welford Road from the age of seven, his opportunity at full-back, although at Munster he was reduced to attempting to catch high kicks and tackling. Northampton have Alex Waller, but neither club has followed the example of Leinster who have come to rely on their academy slightly more than Munster.
Northampton and Leicester are trying to find their way in the new world having forged success in an era when bulk was beautiful. They are struggling to adapt to a faster game in which size is not the only thing: there were reports this week of tension between the Tigers’ director of rugby Cockerill and the head coach Aaron Mauger over playing style, while earlier this season Alex King, a coach in the Mauger mould, left Northampton suddenly while director of rugby Jim Mallinder and forwards coach Dorian West remained. The Saints are so blunt in attack they resemble Wales, uncomfortable moving away from the tried and tested. The Franklin’s Gardens faithful are not impressed.
Leicester will no doubt stand up for a fight in Saturday’s return in front of their own supporters, but it will be a battle in a war that has been all but lost. It is unlikely that the team which finishes second in the group qualifies for the quarter-finals, unless Racing 92 react to losing their first two matches by doing what so many Top 14 sides have over the years done in Europe when the cause is lost and rest their leading players with the focus on the Top 14.
Even then, they would probably need at least two winning bonus points. They are no longer among Europe’s elite: they made the semi-finals last season, a campaign in which the Irish provinces (and Glasgow) suffered because of the World Cup and, in the case of Leinster and Munster, the nascent nature of their squads.
After resisting making a marquee signing for a couple of seasons, Leicester relented after a third year without making the Premiership play-off final, but in his second match for the club, the Australia centre Matt Toomua suffered a serious knee injury. Leinster, in contrast, have invested faith in their academy centre Garry Ringrose who was joined against Northampton by another player who came through the province’s system, the outside-half Joey Carbery.
The frustration of Northampton and Leicester at being outplayed by Leinster and Munster resulted in two England internationals having a card waved at them for making a challenge with swinging arm. Hartley saw red for connecting with the head of Sean O’Brien and concussing the Ireland flanker; Tuilagi, whose challenge was no less rash, escaped with a yellow as Jean Kleyn ducked under his challenge and escaped injury.
Tuilagi, making his first start since the opening night of the season, had only touched the ball three times and stood helplessly while his opposite number Jaco Taute scored the second of his two tries. The game was lost when he belatedly joined a breakdown and displayed no more composure than Hartley had the night before.
Mauger is fighting not just the Leicester way but the traditional England way, which is why the England coach Eddie Jones uses extra training sessions to condition his charges for modern which is about more than bulk and gym work. A recent study compared the England team that played Ireland in the 1980s with the England Under-18 team that played Ireland in 2014: the boys were on average more than a stone a player heavier than the men.
Jones was not in Limerick, but he was in the stand at Franklin’s Gardens to see Hartley lose his head. The England captain had started the match on the bench, which would not have pleased him, and while his international role is clearly defined, his Northampton career has this season appeared to be drawing to its close.
There have been suggestions since he suffered a back injury in the second match of the season at Bristol that caused him to miss Northampton’s next five matches that the club would be prepared to let him go at the end of the season. He has started more games for England this season, four compared to three, and he started a match the Saints had to win on the bench having completed an unbeaten year with England while Lawes and Wood started.
Leinster were in the lead when Hartley came on, but not out of sight. His dismissal ended the contest and it is hard to see Northampton having anything more to do with a player whose latest ban will mean he has spent virtually two seasons of rugby in his career serving suspensions, whether or not the current management team remains in place.
His international career will hinge on Jones, who will not be deflected by advice he receives in the media. When the point comes that Hartley’s value as a leader is outweighed by the impact of his rival for the hooker’s jersey, Jamie George, he will be gone.
Jones has groomed Owen Farrell and Billy Vunipola as vice-captains, but he will also have an eye on the return of James Haskell from injury next month. Haskell, like Hartley, divides opinion, but the England head coach has faith in him.
As for the Lions, Warren Gatland may remember his 2011 observations about Hartley when he claimed he “cracked under pressure” rather than his words last week when he cited him as a potential tour captain.
• This is an extract taken from the Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly rugby union email. To subscribe just visit this page and follow the instructions.
