Champions of Europe

black_otter
By black_otter
January 17 2013

Chiefs face Leinster at Sandy Park in their final pool match of this season's Heineken Cup

Champions of Europe

On Saturday, we welcome the current reigning champions of European rugby (Leinster) to Sandy Park, on the back of having received a thumping from the erstwhile pretenders to that crown.  The scoreline didn't flatter us against Clermont, but as with several of our recent matches, there were periods of play when we could take many positives from what we saw. So where does that leave us?

We can't go through to the quarter final now, nor even qualify as a top loser for the next stages of the Amlin, so all that is left to play for is pride. I am fairly certain that the players will want to make their own response to the ASM scoreline, and will be keen to put down a big display before likely a couple of weeks rest for many of them across the LV= games.  Also the result in Dublin earlier this season will have left many Chiefs players feeling that they came very close to drawing, or even besting, Leinster before, and will hopefully be keen to do so again.

As to our visitors, Leinster have nearly all their big guns now available to them back from injury.  Their fans will tell you that we will see a completely different XV to the one we faced before, but aside from Rob Kearney and Luke Fitzgerald, that's not quite true.  What is correct tho, is that they have been coming into some form in the league and comfortable secured a TBP against Scarlets at the RDS.

Against us, a simple win for them may not be enough, and even a TBP leaves them relying on other teams doing them a favour and other results going their way, for them to reach the quarter-finals.  I don't imagine that they will need much more motivation than this, and expect a full-on attacking display as Leinster go in search of the necessary pool points.  Of course all-out attack is likely to leave gaps, opportunities which hopefully we can exploit.  Our leader, Tommy Hayes, an archetypal Munster man, will need no other motivation than that to want to spoil their party.

May the best team win!