Leicester Tigers 33 Aironi 6: Nothing to report

As Leicester Tigers  Heineken Cup campaign ended with a whimper, the question on all rugby correspondents  lips was, how can English clubs possibly compete in a European competition full of such inequality?  The three most common arguments are: (a) the French spend so much more than everyone else; (b) the Irish don 't need to worry about qualifying for the Heineken Cup from the RaboDirect Pro12 and so can save themselves for these big occasions, or; (c) English clubs can only compete in a slug-fest and lack essential creative skills. Leicester, in a pool containing both a French team and an Irish team and with their fewest number of tries since 2007/08, could reasonably apply all three, but really shouldn't...

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Leicester had to wait until the last 10 minutes to secure the bonus-point try in their 33-6 win over Aironi in a game where they enjoyed an absurd degree of dominance. Richard Cockerill 's team could have stood back and allowed their Italian opponents to jog from the Goldsmiths Stand to the Clubhouse Stand and back again three times and they still wouldn 't have made as many metres with the ball as Leicester. Aironi made six times as many tackles. Leicester had over 20% more possession than Clermont Auvergne did against Aironi last week and scored precisely 49 less points with it. In the narrow context of this game, Leicester achieved barely anything of note; in the wider context of the competition, Sky Sports' dropping of this fixture even from red button status confirmed that this was a non-event.

So, for the second time in three seasons, Leicester fans will be debating whether this European downfall is a sign that the club are no longer one of the continent 's elite, or it 's synonymous with English club rugby 's inability to compete. It 's not possible, of course, to reach a conclusive answer, but From The Crumbie Terrace is firmly of the view that the doomsayers should hold back from writing-off the Aviva Premiership clubs just yet.



(a) The French spend so much more than everyone else

Leicester were grouped with a French club in Clermont who have used their centenary year as the catalyst for huge investment and an Irish province in Ulster who have greatly increased their expenditure through the addition of Southern hemisphere stars John Afoa, Jared Payne, Johann Muller and Pedrie Wannenburg. But when they are able to beat both of these sides at Welford Road it makes the salary cap argument hard to support.


The elephant in the room for the argument that English clubs don 't have the financial clout to compete in Europe, notwithstanding the paltry single victory that Castres, Racing MÈtro and Montpellier each managed, is Edinburgh. The Scottish club operate on a budget around £500k less than London Irish, £1m less than Cardiff Blues and £19m less than Racing MÈtro, yet topped them all to win Pool 2. And if Harlequins had not succumbed to a freak loss away at Connacht in round 6 then the highest spenders of them all, Toulouse, with their reported £33m budget, would have been eliminated and Clermont would have been the sole French qualifier. This has been the Top 14 's worst return since 2008/09.


(b) The Irish don t need to worry about qualifying for the Heineken Cup from the RaboDirect Pro12 and so can save themselves for these big occasions

If you take a look at the starting line-ups for the Irish provinces in a typical Pro12 game then it is unquestionable that the top Irish players are playing fewer games each season. But is that really an advantage? The now superseded view was that the old Celtic League was nothing more than a procession that left its teams ill-equipped for Europe. Rugby correspondents revelled at 5 European titles in 8 seasons for English clus and argued that the demanding English league had a Sandhurst-like quality in preparing its clubs for battle. It is ironic that this same principle is now being used in reverse; it no more explains Leicester 's failure this season than it does the success of Wales at the World Cup, whose regions take part in the same procession as Ireland 's provinces, only with a much smaller budget.


(c) English clubs can only compete in a slug-fest and lack essential creative skills


Leicester 's results in the Heineken Cup this season were exactly the same as Clermont and Ulster: 4 wins, 2 losses, 0 draws. Each team won all their home games, beat Aironi twice and lost away against the other two. The difference was the manner of those results; Leicester just couldn 't pick up the bonus points where they needed to. They haven 't bettered this series of results in the last 5 years and that includes a quarter-final last season and an appearance in the final from the 2008/09 season, they just usually score around 10 tries more in the pool stages.


Is this because they lack essential creative skills? The top points scorers in the Aviva Premiership became the 13th top points scorers in the Heineken Cup because, as mentioned in last week 's post, their Plan A for the Aviva Premiership did not work; they lost the breakdown, their set-piece was disrupted and they had nowhere left to turn. That is not to say the skills are lacking (you would be hard pushed to argue that they re not present in the DNA of a backline including Toby Flood, Manu Tuilagi and Geordan Murphy), but perhaps the tactical approach is.


But in the same way that Edinburgh counter the financial argument, so too Saracens counter the creativity argument. The English champions often win but seldom win pretty; they are a robust, forceful and accurate side who smother their opponents and kick with a devastating accuracy. They are kings of the slug-fest and no side who qualified for the quarter-finals scored less tries. At the other end of the spectrum, Harlequins and Gloucester play with a much-coveted flair but neither qualified.

As a viewer, the gap between the 6 countries whose clubs compete in the Heineken Cup appears to be roughly the same. The Irish provinces have been winning around 70% of their games for the last few years, the English and French around 50% and the Welsh around 45%. Edinburgh aside, Scotland and Italy are still largely making up the numbers. The English total has recently decreased slightly along with the French but then the aforementioned competitiveness of the Aviva Premiership and Top 14 mean that the top sides in each country (save for perhaps Leicester and Toulouse) change over the seasons, whereas Leinster and Munster will always be the top 2 provinces in Ireland. Add to that the fact that Leinster are currently the one consistently world-class side in Europe at the moment and the current picture doesn't look all that bleak for Leicester and their fellow English teams.

Yes, this has been a poor European campaign by Leicester's high standards, but if they can learn some tactical lessons from their defeats then neither French money, Irish preparedness or English grunt should stand in their way.