Hands up all of those who watched the late night Heineken Champions Cup game on Saturday and wondered what they were watching. The one where the Ospreys hammered French champions, Montpellier.
Maybe there’s nothing special about that until you add another point to that statement - they beat Montpellier not at their home ground of Swansea, but away on French soil. They didn’t just beat them either. They could have won by more than the 11 point eventual winning margin, and were pressing for a fourth bonus point try when the match ended.
Watching the Ospreys outplay the Top 14 champions away from home made it almost impossible not to shout out at the television - “Hey, who are these guys, I haven’t seen them before?”
We have seen them before. They are the team lagging in 14th position on the United Rugby Championship log at the halfway point. They drew with the champion Stormers on an inclement night in Swansea, otherwise their pickings from the current URC season have been lean indeed. Could their performance against Montpellier telegraph a potential change of the URC landscape in the second half of competition?
Their chances of getting back into the Champions Cup next year are virtually zero. They need to finish in the top eight to qualify, or be the Welsh Shield champions, which is how they got into this season’s edition of the Champions Cup. Both objectives are far away at present.
Yet against Montpellier they cooked, and it was a good weekend for Welsh clubs in the Challenge Cup too, with Scarlets delivering a rugby lesson to the Toyota Cheetahs in Parma, thus underlining the difference there is being part of the URC and not being part of it. For Scarlets are even worse off on the log than Ospreys are - they are 15th, just one ahead of Zebre. The Dragons went down narrowly at home to the French club, Pau, but Cardiff thrashed Newcastle away to complete a 75 per cent success rate for Welsh clubs from the weekend of European competition.
WELSH RESURGENCE COULD HELP SA TEAMS
A Welsh resurgence, if that is what is happening, could help the South African teams in the URC, for all four local franchises have already completed their commitments against the Welsh sides. They could come in useful though if they upset some of the other teams in contention for top eight places for the playoffs and Heineken Champions Cup qualification.
Munster of course were already upset by Cardiff at the start of the season, and Dragons away, but it appears they have put those initial travails behind them as they used the fortnight of Champions Cup action to confirm the resurgence they were threatening in the last phase of the URC.
The Irish province tends to lift themselves for games in Europe and have often punched above their weight. They sent out the message that they are still dreaming of European glory with the grit they showed in beating Northampton Saints away on Sunday. It was a game of two halves - in the first Munster showed the improvements they have made to their attacking game, in the second they produced a staunch defensive effort against a Saints team that camped on their line for long periods.
That there were no points scored in the second half was as much testament to the Munster defensive effort as it was to the error-rate of opponents who just couldn’t get their power game to click for them in the vibrant atmosphere that increasingly became enveloped in frustration at Northampton’s home ground of Franklin’s Gardens.
Munster only lost to mighty Toulouse by five points in their home game the week before, something that made the away win even more of an imperative for the Limerick based team, so they will return to the URC, where they are steadily climbing the log, in a buoyant mood.
EDINBURGH WILL BE BUOYANT TOO
That’s also the mood that Edinburgh should bring back to the competition after following up their away losing bonus point against Saracens the previous week with a highly impressive 31-20 home win at the DAM Health Stadium over the French club, Castres.
URC leaders and now Champions Cup pool leaders Leinster did what was expected of them when they hammered Gloucester 57-0, with the small print being that Gloucester sent an understrength team for this away game. But it was a weekend where the other Irish province, Ulster, had the pressure further piled on them as they followed up their big loss away the previous week with a loss at home to the Champions Cup title holders, LaRochelle. Dan McFarland’s team though did put up a more spirited effort and they had a losing bonus point to cling to following a seven point defeat.
Among the local teams, it was the Cell C Sharks who ended the fortnight of Champions Cup action flying the South African flag, and they will be hoping to carry that momentum into the derby phase of the URC as they look to make up the ground they have lost on the log in recent times.
The Stormers, currently tied second with the Bulls, will be counting the cost of the injuries they picked up in their good win over London Irish while the Vodacom Bulls clearly targeted the URC derby ahead of Champions Cup when they rested their first choice team for the trip to Exeter.
Results of Heineken Champions Cup
Bordeaux Begles 16 Cell C Sharks 19
Leinster 57 Gloucester 0
Exeter 44 Vodacom Bulls 14
Edinburgh 31 Castres 20
Lyon 20 Saracens 28
Leicester Tigers 23 Clermont Auvergne 16
Ulster 29 La Rochelle 36
DHL Stormers 34 London Irish 14
Montpellier 10 Ospreys 21
Toulouse 45 Sale Sharks 19
Northampton 6 Munster 17
Harlequins 14 Racing 92 10
Challenge Cup results
Emirates Lions 30 Stade Francais 12
Glasgow Warriors 26 Perpignan 18
Brive 24 Connacht 31
Toulon 29 Bath 7
Toyota Cheetahs 26 Scarlets 45
Dragons 21 Pau 27
Bristol 35 Zebre 19
Newcastle 10 Cardiff Rugby 47
Bayonne 7 Benetton 45