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What Edinburgh and Glasgow must overcome to reach the Champions Cup semi's

By Jamie Lyall
Stuart Hogg, Glasgow Warriors and Darcy Graham, Edinburgh Rugby. (Photos by Henry Browne and Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

On Saturday lunchtime, Edinburgh will run down the Murrayfield tunnel and into a cauldron of noise. The place will be packed out and cacophonous and bedecked with colour in a way that it never is for club rugby.

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Where normally ranks of unoccupied, unrequired blue seats loom like rows of shark teeth, this weekend, there will be folk and flags in their droves.

The backdrop will be glorious. This will be a grand day out in the capital, for sure. The hollering and fanfare will be welcome and intoxicating, but it is all a worthless sideshow to Richard Cockerill unless his team deliver a performance to match the fervour.

Cockerill wants to build a champion club where a 40,000 crowd needn’t be a fleeting marvel. Days like this were the norm for Leicester Tigers, where he was reared and shaped, and for Toulon, where he was flung in to the head coach role and took the team to a Top 14 final in the months before moving to Scotland.

His work here thus far has been magnificent. He has taken players muddling along in subterranean levels of form and got them motoring. Stuart McInally, Ben Toolis, Grant Gilchrist, Simon Berghan, and Magnus Bradbury all look infinitely sharper and more malevolent for his influence. Young Scots like Darcy Graham, Luke Crosbie and Jamie Ritchie are flourishing.

Cockerill has stardust in Hamish Watson, John Barclay, Duhan van der Merwe and Bill Mata, his thunderous, tackle-breaking, off-loading Fijian fulcrum. The Barclay-Watson-Mata back-row is as brilliant as you’ll find in any corner of the continent.

But more impressive than the show-stoppers has been Cockerill’s ability to wring every last drop out his squad. Chris Dean and James Johnstone are hardly household names but have been an outstanding centre pairing with the more illustrious Matt Scott and Mark Bennett injured.

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Top of a pool containing Montpellier, Toulon and Newcastle? A home quarter-final in Cockerill’s second season? You’d have had a job getting even the most sanguine of Edinburgh fans to dream that big in the summer of 2017. This is Edinburgh’s testing ground now. And what a test awaits.

There is a mountain of talent in the Munster team that stands between them and only a second-ever semi-final – that much is obvious. They have the meanest defence in the Pro14 and the meanest defence in the Champions Cup. On average this season, they concede just 15 points a game.

There are Grand Slam-winners and Lions in their ranks and in Joey Carbery, a swaggering pivot who was imperious when Ireland came to Murrayfield in February and ground Scotland into a mistake-ridden submission.

But there is also pressure. Frustration. A gnawing hankering for silver that has not been sated in what feels like an age.

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It’s been eight years since Munster’s last trophy – Edinburgh would kill for the rich history of their opponents, but for a province of Munster’s immense stature, that’s a drought to rival the Egyptian famine of Genesis.

Nine of the current squad were at the club when Munster won the Pro12 of 2011, but all bar a couple were pups. Only Billy Holland, Tommy O’Donnell and Keith Earls were around for the Heineken Cup triumph three years earlier and only Earls saw any game time.

For too long, this proud rugby people raised on glory have been the bridesmaid. Munster have been in four Champions Cup semi-finals, three league semi-finals and two league finals since that title eight years ago. Too many near misses. Too much pain. How they thirst for glory and how their support demands it.

This is a monumental challenge for Edinburgh and yet, in the Scottish capital, there is optimism. Buckets of the stuff. That’s the Cockerill impact in microcosm – the belief that no matter who arrives on their turf, Edinburgh can put them away.

This is the club’s first appearance in a top-tier European quarter for seven years. In 2012, a stellar Toulouse team fetched up at Murrayfield and were put to the sword by a Scottish core laced with Fijian elan in front of a bumper crowd. Sound familiar?

If Edinburgh’s challenge is colossal, Glasgow’s is Everest on steroids. In the last eight seasons, Saracens have been European champions twice and runners-up once. In that time they have lost four home games – twice to Clermont, once to Toulouse and once to Toulon. Four home defeats in 31 matches. A win rate of 87%.

Saracens are the reigning Premiership champions and have an arsenal of rugby galacticos who have been here so many times before and know what it takes to get the job done.

Glasgow haven’t walked that hallowed path – not yet, anyway. They have never reached the semi-finals and their only last-eight appearance came two years ago. It ended, of course, with a resounding defeat at Allianz Park.

If his task wasn’t hard enough, Dave Rennie will have to do without some of his form players and most dangerous runners. Nick Grigg is out. Huw Jones is out. Tommy Seymour, a veteran and a Lion, is out. Club-record try-scorer DTH van der Merwe and co-captain Ryan Wilson are crocked.

To beat Saracens with a fully-loaded squad would be fiendishly tough. Do it bereft of this much talent and you’d have to call it the greatest triumph in Warriors history.

Wilson, in particular, will be a grievous loss. He isn’t the biggest carrier or the best jackaler or the flashiest off-loader but he is good at all three and has a work rate to match a beaver on caffeine tablets. More importantly, he is a mighty character – and Glasgow need characters to handle what’s coming their way.

What they also need is the right temperament. The setting for this will be colourful, but in a different way to Murrayfield. Saracens and Glasgow have already contested two bruising, niggly pool matches and Saracens have won twice.

Glasgow showed in those games they have the weaponry to hurt Saracens, but have they got the mettle to stay on it for 80 minutes? Rank inconsistency plagued Scotland’s Six Nations campaign, right up to that absurd Calcutta Cup draw at Twickenham – this level of rugby warfare is no place for flakiness.

Dave Rennie spoke very tellingly and very deliberately this week about what he reckons to be an underhand Saracens ploy for masking errors with “a lot of push-and-shove to maybe bring the referee in to change a decision”.

He said after the first meeting at Scotstoun, a 13-3 defeat peppered with dust-ups and refereeing controversy, that Maro Itoje was “a law unto himself” and “seems to get away with a fair bit”.

Itoje had sarcastically celebrated a disallowed Glasgow try in amongst the joyous home players who had not heard Mathieu Raynal’s whistle.

“They are probably one of the worst teams for mouthing off and celebrating in your face,” said Wilson, before Glasgow lost 38-19 at Allianz Park in December.

The attrition of this game will be Test-level in its intensity. Glasgow will have to wrangle Itoje and Will Skelton and Billy Vunipola and live with the stratospheric kind of power Saracens bring.

They will want to get at Alex Goode and rile Owen Farrell, the play-makers-in-chief, and keep Wales rapier Liam Williams’ opportunities as paltry as possible. Farrell’s errors at fly-half gave Scotland two tries on their comeback trail and the captain ultimately got hooked by Eddie Jones. The odds of Farrell being as ropey again? About the same as Canada winning the World Cup.

Farrell…Itoje…Vunipola…Goode…Williams – we’re talking about some of the very top operators in Europe here. Where are Glasgow in their quest to get up there with them? We’re about to find out.

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Jon 2 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

34 Go to comments
j
john 4 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

15 Go to comments
A
Adrian 6 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

15 Go to comments
T
Trevor 9 hours ago
Will forgotten Wallabies fit the Joe Schmidt model?

Thanks Brett.. At last a positive article on the potential of Wallaby candidates, great to read. Schmidt’s record as an international rugby coach speaks for itself, I’m somewhat confident he will turn the Wallaby’s fortunes around …. on the field. It will be up to others to steady the ship off the paddock. But is there a flaw in my optimism? We have known all along that Australia has the players to be very competitive with their international rivals. We know that because everyone keeps telling us. So why the poor results? A question that requires a definitive answer before the turn around can occur. Joe Schmidt signed on for 2 years, time to encompass the Lions tour of 2025. By all accounts he puts family first and that’s fair enough, but I would wager that his 2 year contract will be extended if the next 18 months or so shows the statement “Australia has the players” proves to be correct. The new coach does not have a lot of time to meld together an outfit that will be competitive in the Rugby Championship - it will be interesting to see what happens. It will be interesting to see what happens with Giteau law, the new Wallaby coach has already verbalised that he would to prefer to select from those who play their rugby in Australia. His first test in charge is in July just over 3 months away .. not a long time. I for one wish him well .. heaven knows Australia needs some positive vibes.

21 Go to comments
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