NOW and again in this business you get journalism’s version of a grenade chucked in your direction by someone from the sports desk. To make matters worse, it is usually propelled with all the nonchalance of a tramp flicking away a spent butt.
One such innocent phone call a few years back ended up with this reporter kneeling on the floor of a Dublin gym retching up a recently consumed breakfast having been put through all manner of punishment by the strength and conditioning coach Mike McGurn.
This week’s missive threatened no such physical torture but the effect was much the same: a feeling of growing uneasiness in the pit of the stomach. The assignment? A blog on whether the current Leinster side is better than Munster were at their height.
Oh dear! Come back Mike, all is forgiven.
First of all, pinning down exactly when Munster were at their peak is tricky in its own right. Their second Heineken Cup, won in 2008, would be an obvious marker but the province has offered up far better performances than that which saw off Toulouse in Cardiff.
What about the Miracle Match, for a start, or the time they conquered Leicester Tigers at Welford Road? Even since 2008 they have destroyed Perpignan in France and made mincemeat of a fancied Ospreys in a European quarter-final at Thomond.
That said, their second European triumph isn’t the worst of markers for our purposes. It doesn’t get much better than beating Guy Noves’ boys in the game’s biggest fixture and a fair few of Munster’s players were at their prime at the time.
Paul O’Connell, Donncha O’Callaghan, Jerry Flannery and Denis Leamy were in their late-20s. Others like Ronan O’Gara, Peter Stringer and David Wallace their early-30s. Individually, and collectively, Munster were at their pomp.
Not everyone liked how they did it. Byron Kelleher accused Declan Kidney’s side of playing boring rugby after a closing 15 minutes in which the red machine ground out the result with its metronomic ‘pick and go’ tactics but, hey, it worked.
Lest we forget, Leinster failed to make it out of their group that year but they were champions 12 months after their southern cousins and, as Rocky Elsom admitted later, they achieved it by playing a pretty limited forward-dominated game.
Right now, they stand within 160 minutes of emulating Munster by claiming a second title and if they manage that they will owe a considerable amount to a serious pack and a formidable defensive line. So far, so similar, then.
Where this Leinster side is certainly better than the Munster teams of recent vintages is in the backs, from numbers 15 to 11, where they possess more dangerous players capable of changing games with their quick hands or a swivel of the hips.
The thing is, until they have matched Munster’s haul in Europe that won’t matter a jot but, if they do win it this year after the pool they were in and having seen off Leicester and Toulouse to boot, it will be hard resist their claims in this particular debate.
There. Another can of worms opened.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/sLQ9DrJwPYo/post.aspx
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