CHAMPIONS CUP WRAP: Leinster fly URC flag but Bordeaux hard to stop

The unexpected quarterfinal exit of Glasgow Warriors has left Leinster as the main challenger to French hegemony in the Investec Champions Cup but it is going to take some performance from the Irish team to prevent Bordeaux-Begles from retaining the title they won for the first time last year.

There is some distortion to the fact that there are two French teams remaining in the last four. It would surely have been three had Bordeaux and six times champions Toulouse not been drawn to face each other in a plum game of the quarterfinal round at the Stade Metropole in Bordeaux that lived up to all the pre-match hype.

Bordeaux were at home but it requires a quality performance to beat Toulouse and they produced it, outlasting their arch-rivals and then putting together a quite sublime series of attacks in the last quarter that put daylight between the teams that looked unlikely when Toulouse were leading 15-12 quite deep in the second half.

It put Bordeaux on a collision course with the only remaining England team in the competition. The side coached by South African Johann van Graan won a high scoring game on Friday night against their close rivals for the English Gallagher Premiership title they won last year, Northampton Saints, in a match that set the tone for an exciting weekend.

There is just a point separating the sides on their domestic table, with Saints leading, and in their big European game it was that close - this time with Bath winning by two points after staging an outstanding fightback after they’d looked out of it at one stage.

Van Graan, a Springbok assistant in the Heyneke Meyer era, has perfected the Bomb Squad effect pioneered first by current Bok coach Rassie Erasmus.

POPULAR UNDERDOGS

Bath will go to Toulon on 3 May as popular underdogs and many will be wanting them to win due to the long sequence of wins the French teams have enjoyed in the competition, plus the enterprising brand of rugby they play.

However, it looks unlikely, although it does need to be noted that the team Bath beat on Friday were the beaten finalists last year.

Glasgow Warriors went into the knock-outs as second seeds to Bordeaux and had high hopes of making good on their home run in the knock-outs - they would have played at the Scotstoun until the semifinal round had they got there - but in the end the pressure of competing across the business ends of both competitions, the Champions Cup and Vodacom URC, just appeared to be too much for them.

They didn’t retain the same imperiousness in their two knock-out games against the Vodacom Bulls and Toulon that they have exhibited for much of the season.

Toulon meanwhile suddenly look the business after dominating the quarterfinal to a far greater extent than they did their round of 16 game against the DHL Stormers the week before.

As a commentator at the Scotstoun game on Saturday put it, had the television operators at the Stade Mayol the week before found the right angle on the final move “no try”, it would have been the Stormers in Glasgow and not the French team.

SUPER HUNGRY TOULON

Now that they are in the last four though, Toulon, multiple winners of the competition but who haven’t tasted success in several year, will be super hungry as they come up against a Leinster team that once again is the lone flyer of the URC flag at this stage of the competition.

It was expected that Glasgow would join them, and make it an all URC semifinal, as we still await a first URC winner of the elite European competition in the URC era (Leinster won it four times before the South African teams were introduced to the Pro14 to make it the URC).

They took some time in getting on top of a tenacious Sale Sharks team that were committed in defence and strong in the scrums despite missing some key personnel but just offered too little on attack. It was still a competitive game early in the second half but once Leinster got momentum and a proper lead they were unstoppable and ran up a one-sided victory.

They will start as strong favourites to beat Toulon in front of what should be a sell-out crowd at the AVIVA Stadium, with the Irish side being presented with home ground advantage they wouldn’t have been expecting as Glasgow went into the Scotstoun game as strong favourites.

In the EPCR Challenge Cup the exit of Connacht at the hands of Monpellier leaves two URC teams in the last four - Ulster and, surprise surprise, the Dragons. Connacht were well beaten by Montpellier but Ulster made a point in favour of the Irish provinces and the URC by beating La Rochelle. The Dragons knocked out fellow URC strugglers Zebre by three points in what looked like a thriller in Parma.

INVESTEC CHAMPIONS CUP QUARTERFINAL RESULTS

Bath 43 Northampton Saints 41

Glasgow Warriors 19 Toulon 22

Leinster 43 Sale Sharks 13

Bordeaux Begles 30 Toulouse 15

Semifinals

Semifinal 1: Leinster v Toulon (Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Saturday 2 May)

Semifinal 2: Bordeaux-Begles v Bath (Stade Atlantlique Bordeaux Metropole, Sunday 3 May)

EPCR Challenge Cup quarterfinals

Benetton 41 Exeter Chiefs 44

Zebre 32 Dragons 35

Montpellier 45 Connacht 22