SPORT ANALYSISThe biggest talking points from rugby across Europe this weekend
Harlequins will travel to Toulouse while Northampton Saints take on Leinster in Dublin in the semi-finals of the Champions Cup as England’s unheralded duo attempt to dethrone European rugby royalty and reach the final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 25 May.
Toulouse thrashed Exeter Chiefs 64-26 in Sunday’s quarter-final, with England flanker Jack Willis among the tries, while on Saturday Bordeaux Begles scrum-half Maxime Lucu really should have knocked Harlequins out with a late conversion of Madosh Tambwe’s second try. But the kick was missed, and Quins deserved the win for scoring six tries and dominating the scrums, even without the rested England loosehead prop Joe Marler, who was on a break in Dubai instead.
Marler’s tweeted reaction was “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee motherf**king donkey! What a win!” as he saw his English understudy Fin Baxter combine with tighthead Will Collier to force Bordeaux’s big men up and back for crucial penalties, while Marcus Smith’s kicking game was on point with a couple of 50-22s, and the slick Quins support play was redolent of their charge to the 2021 Premiership title.
They had felt their style might be better suited to opening Bordeaux up than the more structured version tried by Saracens in two heavy losses to the French side, and so it proved, with England enjoying two teams in the semi-finals for the first time in four years.
Exeter’s attempt to make it three featured some good moments for young backs Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, Josh Hodge and Zack Wimbush, but Antoine Dupont and co were far too strong.
It will be Harlequins’ first Champions Cup semi-final at the 18th attempt, and the venue will be the 33,000-capacity Stadium de Toulouse, which is deemed to fit the description of “home country advantage” afforded to the higher seeds, as it is not their designated home stadium, even though the city’s rugby team have hosted pool matches there before.
Leinster, who won their grudge match with La Rochelle 40-13, will receive Northampton at the 82,000-capacity Croke Park.
Meanwhile, in a quirk that sums up the oddities of European competition, Harlequins’ own Stoop stadium will be staging a Challenge Cup semi-final between the Sharks of South Africa – who for logistical reasons were not permitted to have the tie in their homeland – and French side Clermont Auvergne, with Gloucester at home to Benetton Treviso in the other tie.
The pros and cons of South African participation in the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup – once they entered the United Rugby Championship in 2021, their inclusion came by default – overshadowed Northampton’s 59-22 win over the Bulls on Saturday evening.
Bulls’ boss Jake White continued to defend bringing a much-changed squad who did their best but looked outclassed and out on their feet after the first half.
Phil Dowson, the Saints’ director of rugby, praised South Africa’s rugby heritage, as he said he grew up admiring the Currie Cup, and he witnessed “the production line of some of the best players in the world over the last 20 or 30 years, if not longer” when he took a coaching development course under then Bulls coach John Mitchell in Pretoria.
But that merely spotlighted the frustrations when such a mighty franchise is humbled by 37 points.
South African teams are with us for two reasons: the broadcast revenue added by Supersport, and the danger of isolation when they moved to cut loose from Australia and New Zealand in Super Rugby.
Resting players happens fairly often in a season with too many matches, per se, but the acuteness of this controversy was down to the Bulls snubbing the quarter-finals of a competition that has more prestige for English followers than the URC, which White is prioritising.
In contrast to the Bulls’ infamously tortuous journey to England, all of the squad took direct flights back home, and White was expecting them and the rested first-teamers to be in training today, ready for the visit of Munster in the URC this Saturday.
The problem of the Champions Cup quarter-finals following straight after the round of 16 is in the gift of the three participating leagues – the Premiership, French Top 14 and URC – to change. And White archly hinted the competition’s South African-based sponsors might want to do something about it.
Overall, though, the Bulls and their compatriots have been flying up and down across the equator all season, and you wonder whether any tinkering of formats will ever make this grandiose cross-hemisphere experiment work.
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