Clarity on Champions Cup fixtures
MUNSTER and Leinster’s Champions Cup quarter-final ties will not clash after tournament organisers EPCR announced their schedule yesterday.
Toulon will visit Thomond Park on Easter Saturday, March 31, at 3.15pm with Saracens taking on Leinster at the Aviva Stadium a day later at 3.30pm.
Munster’s clash will be televised by Sky Sports, with Leo Cullen’s Leinster featuring on BT Sports.
Scarlets will meet La Rochelle on Friday, March 30 with Clermont’s encounter with Racing 92 taking place at lunch-time on Easter Sunday.
Leinster will face the winner of the Scarlets-La Rochelle game if they can overcome the current champions, while Munster will travel to France to face Clermont or Racing 92 if they can beat the three-time winners on home soil.
THE Six Nations is all about familiarity. Ageold rivalries, venues you know like the back of your hand, tradition after tradition and clichés that last the test of time.
One rings true more than any other this season. France? You never know which team is going to turn up.
For the past few seasons, you could be sure that Les Bleus would be a pack of hulking bruisers with a surfeit of brawn and a deficit of grey matter.
They could cause anyone a problem, but their fitness invariably let them down and ultimately they have failed to threaten since 2011.
In 2017, they won just three of their 11 Test matches and that record — in particular the draw with Japan in November — led to Guy Noves being relieved of his commission.
He has subsequently been replaced by Jacques Brunel, a familiar figure from his time with Italy.
A pragmatic, experienced coach with close ties to Bernard Laporte, he hardly looks the kind of figure to shake up the French national team from its slumber.
Laporte, the former coach and current head of the French federation who sacked Noves, is under fire himself.
Last Tuesday, his home and the federation’s office was raided by police investigating an alleged conflict of interest involving Laporte and Montpellier owner Mohed Altrad.
Brunel insists that the controversy has nothing to do with his squad, but it all points to a shambolic set-up ahead of the Championship opener.
At the Six Nations launch on Wednesday, Joe Schmidt did everything he could to talk up his opponents but he was swimming against the tide.
Over in New Zealand, Ronan O’Gara’s description of Les Bleus as being in “a mess” rang truer with the perception. Any Irish player who endured the bad days in Paris is wary of the force that France can bring, but the former out-half believes that a well-organised Irish side can win the day.
“France have a lot of players that were missing but you would like to think Ireland will be too disciplined and organised for them,” he said in December.
“They are so far down the road. It’s a small chance that the French could show up and