This is frequently the best week of the year for Europe’s rugby union watchers. Why? Because the northern hemisphere club game, newly released from the suffocating grip of international call-ups and rubbish weather, finally has the chance to show its true colours. The last eight of the European Champions Cup seldom fails to deliver at least one classic or refresh jaded palates before the season’s final surge.
Hopefully it will be similar in 2016. But while some vividly attractive prospects await – Wasps v Exeter Chiefs, Racing 92 v Toulon – one or two elements of the glorious annual smorgasbord will be conspicuously absent. No Irish, Welsh or Scottish sides, for a start, have made the Champions Cup quarter-finals, the first time Celtic involvement has been entirely absent at this juncture. There will also be just one match – Leicester v Stade Français – involving cross-border rivalry. The tournament livery will be different but, essentially, the other three fixtures are Premiership or Top 14 games with a twist.
There is little point, too, in pretending we will be witnessing the absolute pinnacle of global provincial rugby union right now. By far the most spectacular rugby on the planet is being played in New Zealand by the other Chiefs, currently setting fresh attacking standards in Super Rugby. For anyone who has missed their recent demolitions of the Force and the Brumbies, take a peep online. To say they are playing a different sport to some leading club sides in Europe is only a slight exaggeration.
If it helps to have a couple of magicians such as Damian McKenzie and Aaron Cruden in your backline, it is the Chiefs’ collective ambition that sets them apart. Well, that and their eye for space. And their expert support running. And their reliably deft off-loading. They still have forceful centres and wings to add the necessary element of directness but a ball-playing No8 in Michael Leitch and a razor-sharp scrum-half – latterly Brad Weber – also have pivotal roles. Thirty-four tries in six games, 22 of them in the second half of their matches, indicate a side intent on running their opponents right off their feet.
Maybe they will get reeled in and suffocated at some stage. Not every side is required to play the same way by some kind of worldwide decree. But what the Chiefs do offer – and all credit to their head coach, Dave Rennie, and his assistants for encouraging it – is a compelling blueprint of how the game can conceivably look if teams are sufficiently brave to aim a little bit higher, scrums stay up and referees play ball.
Such aspirations are already shared by Exeter and Wasps, the two proactive Premiership clubs most comparable to the Waikato-based charmers. It may not be entirely a coincidence that both boast an in-form Kiwi-reared No8 capable of supplying the all-important momentum from the base of the scrum. In Wasps’ case, the antipodean George Smith, Jimmy Gopperth, Charles Piutau and Frank Halai also ensure Wasps’ all-court game is not a completely foreign concept. The positive response of younger British players such as Elliot Daly, Rob Miller and Thomas Young strongly suggests there will be no going back.
In the shape of Miller, scorer of two lovely tries against Northampton at the weekend, as well as Exeter’s Phil Dollman and Gareth Steenson, there has been mileage, too, in trusting smaller, more nimble players to do what comes naturally. Not long ago full-back used to be a position for hulking defensive rocks; the brighter sparks in the game now appreciate that pace and vision at 15 – as well as 9 – is the shrewdest way ahead in a sport that is evolving again on the back of the 2015 World Cup.
Reaching the semi-finals of Europe, in short, is all well and good but the gold standard is being set elsewhere. So the challenge is simple: can the four Euro contests outflank this Friday’s fixture between the Chiefs and the Blues? The pride of England and France really could do with making the southern hemisphere sit up and take notice. Tick that box and it will indeed be a grand rugby weekend.
BANNING ORDER
Rugby has hardly been short of disciplinary talking points lately but the worst offender has been impossible to miss. The gruesome footage from Argentina showing a local prop, Cipriano Martinez, blatantly kicking an opponent in the head is not for the squeamish and his shocked club have reacted by dishing out a reported 99-year ban. Little scope for a successful appeal there, it would seem.
It raises the question of whether more could – and should – be done to weed out idiots such as Martínez earlier. Rugby’s supposed code of sportsmanship and honour becomes increasingly hard to promote when thousands of kids worldwide can disprove it instantly with one click of their smartphones.
WORTH WATCHING ...
The Hong Kong Sevens has an uncanny knack of clashing with other big sporting events elsewhere and this weekend’s edition is no exception. With sevens about to return to the Olympic Games schedule this summer, however, this raucous annual gathering represents a vital springboard for every hopeful nation. For those wondering, the preliminary GB squad for the Olympics is not expected to be named until next month, allowing scant time to integrate those not yet involved in the HSBC Sevens series. It may well be that only players not required for end-of-season finals or summer tours will be available, leaving an under-powered GB squad as yet another stricken vessel awash on the toxic high seas of club v country politics.
