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Posted 23 days ago
THE CRASS amongst us would suggest that it is easy to place French powerhouse Clermont Auvergne straight into the final of the Heineken Cup. They are strong, they are slick, they are free scoring in attack and stingy in defence. They should beat Munster.
Posted 39 days ago
LAST WEEKEND was a rip-roaring weekend of European rugby, with the action starting on a Thursday evening with Gloucester v Biarritz and finishing as the sun set on Sunday evening with a Jonny Wilkinson-inspired Toulon edging past a valiant Leicester.
We’ve brought you a little picture gallery, to show you the best of the action, enjoy…
Posted 41 days ago
CLERMONT AUVERGNE demonstrated just why they are the favourites to lift the Heineken Cup this year as they clinically saw off Montpellier. Rugby World, however, has decided to pinpoint a few individuals, rather than teams, who stood out over the weekend.
Posted 45 days ago
GIVEN THE intelligent, unfussy rugby instincts that characterise his game, it comes as no surprise that Alex Goode also possesses a pretty precise memory.
Describing a short sequence an hour into his first Test start at Port Elizabeth 10 months ago – the last time he faced Springbok scrum half Ruan Pienaar – the Saracens and England full-back offers a razor-sharp recollection.
Posted 46 days ago
COMPARED TO the chill winds that have been blowing through Leicester of late, Toulon on Sunday will feel positively balmy for the English club. Spring has been slow in showing its face even on the Cote D’Azur but temperatures of 15 degrees make a mockery of the sub-zero conditions in England. But the Tigers can expect the mercury to rise on Sunday evening when they emerge at the Stade Mayol to take on Toulon in their eagerly-awaited Heineken Cup quarter-final.
Posted 79 days ago
IT’S A tough life being a referee – hundreds of decisions to make, crowds jeering you, coaches blaming you. There was an even more painful moment for Wayne Barnes recently. During Munster’s Heineken Cup game against Racing Metro in January, Ian Keatley launched a kick and the ball hit Barnes smack in the face.
“The ball travels about 35 metres after…
Posted 113 days ago
MUCH LIKE younglings obeying a magical, umbrella-toting nanny, we have packed the Heineken Cup away in its box until March. We have no use for it when we have the all-singing, all-dancing Six Nations coming up. However, as much as we tuned in to the crashing, the banging and the walloping in order to entertain ourselves, it was serving several purposes.
Posted 117 days ago
AFTER THE final pool matches at the weekend we now know the quarter-finalists, who drops into the Amlin Challenge Cup and who goes back home, wondering what could have been and desperately trying to fool everyone else into thinking that the lack of ‘European hangovers’ on the horizon is a good thing.
Posted 125 days ago
WE ARE now left with one last round in the Heineken Cup pool stages, with teams not so much balanced on a knife’s edge as trying to clamber onto the already heavily laden figure of Buckaroo. It is not yet clear who will be tossed from the Cup. The mathematicians and point-watchers among us may well have their theories. No doubt there is a permutation we have not considered.
Posted 128 days ago
SPORTING CLICHES are often abused. Every tournament has a Group of Death and every player is weighed and measured to see if they will be found inferior or capable of cutting huge swathes through the mustard. Of course, same old sayings and hilarious malapropisms from colourful commentators aside, it’s hard to avoid something simple and obvious about the Heineken Cup.
