Tigers are poised for Test match challenge
EUROPE returns this weekend and with it the prospect of the club match of the season.
Leicester, unbeaten at home this season, face Leinster, the four times Heineken Champions Cup winners who are all but Ireland in another name.
Such will be the noise at a packed Welford Road that is is likely to be heard at rivals Northampton. The Tigers may be the surprise leaders of the Premiership given where they were when Steve Borthwick took over as head coach in the summer of 2020, but their form in the Champions Cup shows their position is not a false one.
They are unbeaten in the tournament they have twice claimed, winning in France against BordeauxBegles and Clermont Auvergne.
So are their opponents on Saturday and the Tigers can consider themselves unfortunate to be facing the United Rugby Championship champions and leaders who dropped down the seedings after their group match in Montpellier was called off due to a Covid outbreak in the province’s camp and the points awarded to
the home side, a decision that disgusted Leinster.
And so a contest beckons between two teams that have won the tournament six times between them and appeared in 10 finals: the last occasion for Leicester was in 2009 when they were beaten 19-16 at Murrayfield by Leinster whose outside-half was then, as now, Johnny Sexton.
“It will be our biggest game of the season so far,” said Ollie Chessum, below, the back rower who returns from suspension next weekend having been sent off in the second leg of the last 16 tie against Clermont for a dangerous tackle.
“They are one of the best teams out there and have
been for
some time. We know what is coming.”
Twelve Leinster players were in the starting line-up at the Aviva Stadium in November when Ireland defeated the All Blacks with a 13th on the bench, prop Cian Healy, another survivor from the 2009 final against the Tigers.
“It brings a Test match aura to the game,” said the 21-year-old Chessum who made his debut for England in the Six Nations in only his second season in senior rugby.
“They have stars throughout their side and, in my first year in the Champions Cup, it is a massive game for me personally if I am selected.
“We will have the crowd behind us, the 16th man who help you through the tight moments. We did not think we would be so far along this season and it shows what has been built here. We deserve to be at home in the quarter-finals and now it is about putting on a performance.”
If the clash between two league leaders is the standout tie of the round, Minster’s encounter with the holders Toulouse at the Aviva Stadium is not far behind. It will be the third time the teams have met at this stage of the Champions Cup and Munster won the previous two handsomely at Thomond Park, which is hosting an Ed Sheeran concert on Thursday
and Friday, in 2014 and 2017.
If Leicester and Munster win, they will enjoy home advantage in the semi-final, although for the Irish province it will mean another trip to the Aviva Stadium with Thomond Park again unavailable.
For this season only, the semi-finals will be played at the chosen venues of the highest ranked clubs, which in the Tigers’ case means Welford Road.
The other quarter-final on Saturday is an allFrench affair between last season’s beaten finalists, La Rochelle, and Montpellier, who defeated Leicester to win the Challenge Cup at Twickenham.
Montpellier, one-point conquerors of Harlequins in the last 16, lead the Top 14 but La Rochelle are its form side and went into this weekend’s match at Toulouse armed with six successive victories having started Ronan O’Gara’s first campaign in charge with three defeats.
Sunday’s match sees Sale Sharks travel to Paris to face Racing 92 having been eliminated at the quarter-final stage last season in La Rochelle.
“We know we are good enough,” said the Sharks’ director of rugby, Alex Sanderson. “We did well in the first half in La Rochelle but not in the second and Racing are another team that can produce lightning bolts. We have the chance to get to a place where we have never been.”