Brendan Gallagher looks ahead to next week’s big clashes
Warren Gatland’s final selection may be swayed by stellar Euro showings says Brendan Gallagher
“There is no doubt England could’ve done with Cipriani on the bench in Dublin”
European Cup quarterfinal weekend is right up there with the very best rugby weekends of the season but doubly so this season with so many Lions places still undecided.
Lions coach Warren Gatland indicated after the Six Nations that as many as a dozen places were still up for grabs, an unusually high number with the Six Nations done and dusted.
Right now would be a very good time indeed for fringe players or, indeed, perhaps an unsuspected bolter to put their best foot forward one final time.
The party line is always that selection is a season long process but MoM performances or match-winning contributions will undoubtedly count double, or even more, in Europe next week.
It’s a tricky one. For most of the season all Lions candidates will have tried to put Lions thoughts on the backburner and right up to the end of the Six Nations that process hasn’t been too difficult.
Players have had five matches to compile a body of recent work on which they can be judged. But now, for some, the European games really do have the feel of a final trial. It can’t be dressed up any other way.
We all fancy we know who they are and the players will themselves have sniffed the wind, yet somehow they have still got to serve their team and put personal considerations entirely to one side.
First up is Leinster against Wasps which has all the makings of the club game of the season, a Test match in all but name. Sometimes the hype can be too much but only a hurricane or a foot of mud at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin can stop this being spectacular.
Some of those involved are already on the plane to New Zealand – Jonny Sexton, Jack McGrath, Sean O’Brien, Elliot Daly and Joe Launchbury – but for others this humdinger takes on even more importance if that is possible.
Robbie Henshaw scored the try that finally did for the All Blacks back in Chicago and has shown up pretty well for Ireland this season save for his sloppy intervention into that vital rolling maul in Cardiff which cost Rory Best a try at a crucial stage of the game.
Henshaw, though, is a very particular ball-carrying No.12.
Is Warren Gatland looking for such a player given that Owen Farrell, with his very different skillset, seems the most likely starter at 12? Perhaps not but there is no obvious like-for-like replacement for Farrell should the latter get injured.
Henshaw is fearless, has beaten the All Blacks and is getting better. The Galway man is also building a great midfield partnership with Garry Ringrose who has enjoyed a very decent debut Six Nations tournament and rocketed himself into contention with an outstanding individual display against England.
If these two went well in tandem against Wasps they could both benefit massively.
Frustrated spectators on Saturday will be Rob Kearney and Jamie Heaslip who have both been ruled out a week ahead of proceedings with injury.
Both would probably come under the ‘borderline’ category of players who required one last big game to get over the finishing line. Kearney still looks class when he plays but needs to provide evidence of his fitness as the latter part of his career seems increasingly injury-prone.
On the Wasps side, is it too late for Thomas Young, is there any room for a bolter?
Almost certainly not but it would be unlike Gatland not to make at least one left-field selection.
With Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric nailed on and his own Wasps colleague James Haskell pushing hard for one of those precious backrow positions – and that’s before you consider Sean O’Brien – there seems no room for manoeuvre.
Yet it takes no stretch of the imagination to see Young being absolutely outstanding in a Lions team trying to play fast tempo attacking rugby. But is that the game Gatland has in mind?
Danny Cipriani against Sexton is an enticing prospect purely in terms of the game although it would be stretching the point to argue there are Lions implications.
Sexton is pretty much a nailed-on starter for the Test team, Cipriani is a 50-1 shot for the squad and realistically is playing for a place on England’s tour of Argentina.
And yet, you sense that if Wasps are going to win this tie – Leinster must start favourites albeit narrow ones – Cipriani will have to produce one of those performances that would invite talk about the job he could do for the Lions.
There is absolutely no question England could have done with him on the bench in Dublin last week. It cried out for that X-factor he can still provide and that ability to operate on limited possession and that could again be the case in New Zealand this summer.
One final name from this match to conjure with – Leinster wing Adam Byrne.
There is a strong whiff of the young Jeremy Guscott about this
racehorse on the Leinster wing. He’s a rank outsider but he’s the real deal. Munster, meanwhile, take on Toulouse and what should be a hell of a match and they will field three certain Lions tourists in Conor Murray, CJ Stander and their skipper Peter O’Mahony. So who else will Gatland be looking at? Simon Zebo did little wrong in the Six Nations but has he actually done enough to earn selection? We haven’t seen many of those trademark moments of genius recently. Keith Earls has been lively but still sometimes looks like a centre playing wing and Donnacha Ryan has kept plugging away and was exceptional against England last week. The opposition at second row is daunting but rarely is Ryan found wanting. At the very least he will want to make a point even if he doesn’t get the Gatland nod. Saracens against Glasgow Warriors is another belter with its fair share of Lions connotations. Most of Saracens’ England men are nailed on but their hooker Jamie George could do with a massive game to underpin his case. Intriguingly George lines up against Fraser Brown who is mooted by some as a possible bolter.
Glasgow, unlike Scotland, have marked their season with outstanding wins on the road at Racing and Leicester and some of the Scots who lost ground during that humbling at Twickenham will enjoy one last throw of the dice at Allianz Park.
Jonny Gray should not be judged on one sub-par performance there, he has been consistently outstanding for club and country for a couple of years now and will want to remind everybody of that against the strongest club opposition available.
Finn Russell has much to offer even if the occasional eccentricity and bad option still creeps into his game, Zander Fagerson is surely in the mix, Josh Strauss as well, and how the latter’s abrasiveness was missed towards the latter stage of the Six Nations.
And that leaves Clermont against Toulon with no real Lions interest although a fine game. Two Englishmen could, however, have key roles to play.
David Strettle now almost qualifies for ‘veteran’ status but his try-scoring powers remain undiminished while Nick Abendanon is another England ‘reject’ – or at least another considered surplus to requirements – who remains one of Clermont’s most potent attacking forces.