Champions Cup quarter-finals preview – this is a humdinger of a last-eight
It’s quarter-finals time in the Champions Cup with three Premiership clubs still in with a chance of winning the competition.
After five of last week’s ties in the round of 16 were repeats from the pool stage – described by the competition organisers as an “anomaly” with a seven per cent chance of occurring – we roll straight into a fantastic weekend of rugby union, with two first encounters and two magnificent rematches.
Three teams from England, three from France, one from Ireland and one from South Africa make up the cast list.
Union Bordeaux Begles vs Harlequins
A short history lesson needed here, for a host club who used to be two clubs: Stade Bordelais and Club Athletique Bordeaux-Begles Gironde, until a merger in 2006. The new combination mostly fiddled around in the lower half of the Top 14 table until they were leading the way but frustrated by the Covid-curtailed and ultimately cancelled 2020-21 season. In 2021, 2022 and 2023, Bordeaux Begles were Top 14 semi-finalists, so they have been building the head of steam that has blown away the three-time winners Saracens not once but twice this season – 55-15 in the pool stage and 45-12 in last week’s round of 16.
This has translated into a backline packed with French internationals – scrum-half Maxime Lucu, centres Nicolas Depoortere and Yoram Moefana, wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey, and the brilliant finisher Damian Penaud signed from Clermont Auvergne last summer – while 21-year-old fly-half Mateo Garcia has covered ably for the injured Mathieu Jalibert.
They play in claret – of course – and the forwards counter-ruck like demons, so Harlequins flanker Will Evans, who deserves a shot with England some time, will find his superb jackalling severely tested. With the Quins rumour mill suggesting scrum-half Danny Care and prop Joe Marler might be rested for Premiership duty to come, it looks even more of a backs-to-the-wall job, although flanker Chandler Cunningham-South could return after a calf injury with England in the Six Nations.
The London side have had famous days in France in the past, including a 31-28 win over Racing 92 in Paris this season, and they squeezed past Glasgow 28-24 in the round of 16 last week, crucially surviving Marler’s second-half sin-binning with no points conceded. It will take 80 minutes of that attitude, and more, to deny France’s new force.
Leinster vs La Rochelle
To Dublin, now, and the repeat of the last two finals – except this time we are treated to it in the last eight, mainly down to the holders La Rochelle starting slowly in the pool stage and coming through to last week’s one-point victory away to Stormers with a lowly seeding of 10th.
Which in turn was due in part, according to England wing Jack Nowell in an interview with i a week ago, to gradually bringing the club’s 11 World Cup players onto the same page after most had suffered disappointment in the global tournament in September and October.
In those two Champions Cup finals, La Rochelle beat Leinster 24-21 in Marseille in 2022, and 27-26 in 2023 in Dublin. But there is a more recent meeting, when Leinster won 16-9 in this season’s pool, so no one can say definitively that one side has the sign over the other. The French are coached by an Irishman in Ronan O’Gara, and they have spent the last few days preparing in his native Cork, with the mighty centre Jonathan Danty back last week from a five-week ban picked up during the Six Nations, to join prop Uini Atonio, No 8 Greg Alldritt and flanker Levani Botia among La Rochelle’s main men.
Leo Cullen’s Leinster knocked Leicester out last week, 36-22, with some impressive second-half defence to embellish three tries by scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park, and one each for Robbie Henshaw and Jack Conan. So the only mystery here is working out which of these Champions Cup big dogs will still be snarling at the end.
Northampton Saints vs Bulls
There was always the possibility of logistical problems ruining the idea of South African teams joining European competitions, and a case in point surrounds the Bulls’ trip to the East Midlands.
Having won their last-16 tie at home to Lyon last Saturday, the Pretoria-based franchise had to quickly arrange flights north, with nothing booked in advance, and have taken on a tortuous journey with the squad split into eight initial flights to Dubai, Doha, Zurich, Brussels, Schiphol, Frankfurt and two London airports. Well, semi-tortuous – they were at least flying business class, at a cost to the South Africa Rugby Union of £175,000, although that raises another question of the best use of scarce money and the environmental impact.
Boss of the Bulls is Jake White, the 2007 World Cup-winning coach, who has also worked at Montpellier in France and often been linked to English jobs – sometimes through his own self-promotion – without ever getting one. His current team are third in the United Rugby Championship (URC) behind Leinster and Glasgow, and they won at Bristol Bears in the Champions Cup pool stage despite resting several key players.
This time the Bulls are insisting they had nine frontline men in the past two matches, and that will be the explanation if the likes of star Springbok backs Willie le Roux, Canan Moodie and Kurt-Lee Arendse are missing, as well as the bludgeoning captain Marcell Coetzee, ex-Leicester flanker Marco van Staden and former Harlequins prop Wilco Louw.
White is of course a competitive animal, and he will analyse the hell out of Northampton’s much-praised backline moves, based around England half-backs Alex Mitchell – who postponed wrist surgery after the Six Nations to keep serving his club – and Fin Smith. There are worrying recent memories of Northampton coming up short at home to La Rochelle last season, but Saints have bulked up since then, so the wings Tommy Freeman and Ollie Sleightholme are punching in higher weight categories, and they were as pleased with their defence as with the attack in last week’s 24-14 win over Munster.
Courtney Lawes, Lewis Ludlam and Alex Waller are on the final lap of their Northampton careers. They now know it’s Leinster at Dublin’s Croke Park or La Rochelle at Stadium MK in Milton Keynes in the semi-finals if they get through. To make the final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 25 May would top anything the long-serving trio have done in a club jersey.
Toulouse vs Exeter Chiefs
It was a wonderful adventure when Exeter Chiefs won the 2020 Champions Cup, in a double with the Premiership, but also very weird. A season interrupted by Covid in March resumed in August with 10 weeks in which to make history, amid empty stadiums and a morale-sapping regime of swabs up noses.
Chiefs came through a pool with Glasgow, La Rochelle and Sale that had been completed in January, and as second seeds their quarter-final with Northampton was played at Sandy Park and then, due to Covid restrictions, the semi-final win over Toulouse was at the same venue. The final against a Racing 92 team who had several Covid cases in the build-up was switched from Marseille to Bristol’s Ashton Gate.
There has been no such easier route this year, as Chiefs travel to the five-time European champions Toulouse, whose scrum-half Antoine Dupont has been dabbling in sevens of late, but still turned in 15 appearances for his club since the World Cup, including all five Champions Cup ties as ‘Les Rouge et Noir’ beat Cardiff, Harlequins, Ulster and Bath in the pool, scoring 26 tries, and knocked Racing out last week, 31-7. The World Cup and Six Nations absentee, Romain Ntamack, is fit again at fly-half, and erstwhile England flanker Jack Willis is part of a pack including France’s giant new lock, Emmanuel Meafou.
Exeter trailed to Bath at half-time of last week’s round of 16 tie at Sandy Park, but the visitors lost midfield backs Finn Russell and Cameron Redpath to injury and were overhauled by tries from two of Chiefs’ new wave of forwards, Greg Fisilau and Ethan Roots – one signed from Wasps and the other from Ospreys.
Toulouse have a surprisingly poor record at home to English clubs but none since Sarries’ win there in 2015-16. The power and offloading of the forwards and class direction from Dupont and Ntamack make this look a mighty task for the Exe men.
