WHEN YOU CONSIDER that, between them, they have won almost a third of all the European Cups ever played, it feels like a statistical anomaly that Leinster and Toulouse will this weekend meet for the first time in a final.
Saturday’s showpiece at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will mark the 15th clash between Ireland’s eastern province and French rugby’s aristocrats.
Each club is the other’s most common enemy across 29 years of Champions Cup rugby. Familiarity has hardly bred contempt, but a ferocious rivalry that will culminate in the most fitting way when Matthew Carly first sounds his whistle in North London in six day’s time.
It is a rivalry that once ebbed between them and has more recently flowed in one direction. But while Leinster have had Toulouse’s number since the turn of this decade, the only number that truly matters is five.
It speaks to the heft of both institutions that, on average, Leinster and Toulouse have crossed paths roughly every third season across three decades of club rugby’s greatest competition.
Leinster, for whom Champions Cup qualification has never been a live concern, have featured in every edition since the tournament’s inception. Toulouse, who must each year negotiate a far more treacherous path into Europe’s top tier, have missed the boat just once — during the generational embarrassment that was their 2016/17 campaign.
Since the inaugural Heineken Cup in 1995, Stade have won half of their 22 French championships as well as five European titles. Leinster, meanwhile, have won four European Cups, a Challenge Cup, and eight league titles since the Celtic League kicked into gear in 2001/2002.
Shrinking things down to a head-to-head table, Leinster have in the last two years pulled out to an 8-6 lead in overall victories against Saturday’s opponents.
It’s mad to think that it all kicked off at Donnybrook. It was far from a rivalry when reigning European champions Toulouse visited Dublin in 1997, overcoming plucky Leinster side 34-25 in their Heineken Cup pool before running out 19-point winners in the reverse fixture.
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It would be four years before the clubs met again — and both of their record victories over each other occurred that same season, 2001/2002.
Leinster, steered by a metronomic kicking display by Nathan Spooner as well as the return to form of two-try Brian O’Driscoll, hockeyed a much-vaunted Toulouse outfit 40-10 in their Heineken Cup pool opener at Donnybrook in September.
Four months later, Matt Williams’ side visited the Stade Ernest-Wallon still unbeaten in all competitions and seeking a home quarter-final. They trailed by three points at the break before Toulouse — inspired by a hat-trick by Cedric Heymans — racked up 33 points in 20 second-half minutes. Emile N’Tamack, father of the out-half who intends to break Leinster hearts 22 years later, also added a try in a 43-7 demolition.
Leinster’s next trip to La Ville Rose, though, foreshadowed an entire era of Irish rugby. Their 41-35 success over the European kings in the sides’ 2006 quarter-final will forever remain a prominent in the eastern province’s Champions Cup iconography.
In one of the greatest games of knockout rugby ever played, the eighth seeds dumped out the top seeds and turned the Heineken Cup on its head.
Horgan’s break. Contepomi’s boot. Hickie for the corner. Brian O’Driscoll in general. It was an attacking performance emblematic of Leinster but it yielded a miracle result which, at the time, was more befitting their southern neighbours.
Though it didn’t translate to immediate success, that last-eight clash felt catalytic as Leinster gradually began to shed the perception that they consisted more of style than substance.
In the fullness of time, losing that game might have been Toulouse’s greatest ever balls-up; not because they deserved to win it, but because they opened the door to the bogeyman.
Leinster and Toulouse exchanged wins during the following season’s pools. The Frenchmen didn’t truly get their own back for their ’06 defeat until four years later.
It was Leinster who were the defending European champions in 2010 and they took 4,000 fans down to Toulouse’s football stadium, ‘Le Stade’, for a semi-final. They travelled without rising star Johnny Sexton, however, who had sustained a broken jaw in their quarter-final with Clermont three weeks earlier.
Despite the best efforts of the oft-forgotten Shaun Berne in Sexton’s stead, Leinster’s reign was ended by a couple of Toulousain tries amid four second-half minutes of madness: one by Yannick Jauzion, the other by David Skrela. Toulouse went on to reclaim their throne, winning a fourth European Cup.
They haven’t beaten Leinster in a knockout game in the 14 years since.
Joe Schmidt’s men got their own back in 2011′s semi-final. Sexton kicked 22 points in Leinster’s 32-23 success at Lansdowne Road. A round later, he willed his side back from the brink as they sealed their second Champions Cup triumph.
The sides didn’t reconvene until the 2018/19 pools, again swapping victories. Toulouse pipped Leinster at the Stade Ernest-Wallon. Leinster then beat Toulouse by three scores at the RDS. The latter result was something of a premonition because ever since that 28-13 pool win in January 2019, the board has been all blue.
Leinster bludgeoned Toulouse in that season’s semi and they’ve more recently done the same thing in back-to-back campaigns.
Leo Cullen’s side have had an average of 20 points to spare over Toulouse in their last three semi-final showdowns, racking up a combined 111 points. They’ve scored 11 tries to Toulouse’s three.
Zoom out, and they’ve beaten Toulouse in five Champions Cup knockout games whereas Toulouse have done the same to them only once, in the 2010 semi-final.
Toulouse’s sole European title since 2010 came three years ago, when La Rochelle took out Leinster at the semi-final stage. Leinster have effectively become for Les Toulousains what La Rochelle were to them until April.
Toulouse, their badge decorated with five stars, their rugby refined to a form of high art, are justifiably the poster-boys of European club rugby but no club on the continent has so routinely torn that poster off the wall as Leinster.
Ugo Mola’s side are bigtime. Leo Cullen’s team are their big bad. Finals don’t come much bigger.
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Leinster v Toulouse: a rivalry in which the Blues have become the bogeymen
WHEN YOU CONSIDER that, between them, they have won almost a third of all the European Cups ever played, it feels like a statistical anomaly that Leinster and Toulouse will this weekend meet for the first time in a final.
Saturday’s showpiece at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will mark the 15th clash between Ireland’s eastern province and French rugby’s aristocrats.
Each club is the other’s most common enemy across 29 years of Champions Cup rugby. Familiarity has hardly bred contempt, but a ferocious rivalry that will culminate in the most fitting way when Matthew Carly first sounds his whistle in North London in six day’s time.
It is a rivalry that once ebbed between them and has more recently flowed in one direction. But while Leinster have had Toulouse’s number since the turn of this decade, the only number that truly matters is five.
It speaks to the heft of both institutions that, on average, Leinster and Toulouse have crossed paths roughly every third season across three decades of club rugby’s greatest competition.
Leinster, for whom Champions Cup qualification has never been a live concern, have featured in every edition since the tournament’s inception. Toulouse, who must each year negotiate a far more treacherous path into Europe’s top tier, have missed the boat just once — during the generational embarrassment that was their 2016/17 campaign.
Since the inaugural Heineken Cup in 1995, Stade have won half of their 22 French championships as well as five European titles. Leinster, meanwhile, have won four European Cups, a Challenge Cup, and eight league titles since the Celtic League kicked into gear in 2001/2002.
Shrinking things down to a head-to-head table, Leinster have in the last two years pulled out to an 8-6 lead in overall victories against Saturday’s opponents.
It’s mad to think that it all kicked off at Donnybrook. It was far from a rivalry when reigning European champions Toulouse visited Dublin in 1997, overcoming plucky Leinster side 34-25 in their Heineken Cup pool before running out 19-point winners in the reverse fixture.
It would be four years before the clubs met again — and both of their record victories over each other occurred that same season, 2001/2002.
Leinster, steered by a metronomic kicking display by Nathan Spooner as well as the return to form of two-try Brian O’Driscoll, hockeyed a much-vaunted Toulouse outfit 40-10 in their Heineken Cup pool opener at Donnybrook in September.
Four months later, Matt Williams’ side visited the Stade Ernest-Wallon still unbeaten in all competitions and seeking a home quarter-final. They trailed by three points at the break before Toulouse — inspired by a hat-trick by Cedric Heymans — racked up 33 points in 20 second-half minutes. Emile N’Tamack, father of the out-half who intends to break Leinster hearts 22 years later, also added a try in a 43-7 demolition.
Leinster’s next trip to La Ville Rose, though, foreshadowed an entire era of Irish rugby. Their 41-35 success over the European kings in the sides’ 2006 quarter-final will forever remain a prominent in the eastern province’s Champions Cup iconography.
In one of the greatest games of knockout rugby ever played, the eighth seeds dumped out the top seeds and turned the Heineken Cup on its head.
Horgan’s break. Contepomi’s boot. Hickie for the corner. Brian O’Driscoll in general. It was an attacking performance emblematic of Leinster but it yielded a miracle result which, at the time, was more befitting their southern neighbours.
Though it didn’t translate to immediate success, that last-eight clash felt catalytic as Leinster gradually began to shed the perception that they consisted more of style than substance.
In the fullness of time, losing that game might have been Toulouse’s greatest ever balls-up; not because they deserved to win it, but because they opened the door to the bogeyman.
Leinster and Toulouse exchanged wins during the following season’s pools. The Frenchmen didn’t truly get their own back for their ’06 defeat until four years later.
It was Leinster who were the defending European champions in 2010 and they took 4,000 fans down to Toulouse’s football stadium, ‘Le Stade’, for a semi-final. They travelled without rising star Johnny Sexton, however, who had sustained a broken jaw in their quarter-final with Clermont three weeks earlier.
Despite the best efforts of the oft-forgotten Shaun Berne in Sexton’s stead, Leinster’s reign was ended by a couple of Toulousain tries amid four second-half minutes of madness: one by Yannick Jauzion, the other by David Skrela. Toulouse went on to reclaim their throne, winning a fourth European Cup.
They haven’t beaten Leinster in a knockout game in the 14 years since.
Joe Schmidt’s men got their own back in 2011′s semi-final. Sexton kicked 22 points in Leinster’s 32-23 success at Lansdowne Road. A round later, he willed his side back from the brink as they sealed their second Champions Cup triumph.
The sides didn’t reconvene until the 2018/19 pools, again swapping victories. Toulouse pipped Leinster at the Stade Ernest-Wallon. Leinster then beat Toulouse by three scores at the RDS. The latter result was something of a premonition because ever since that 28-13 pool win in January 2019, the board has been all blue.
Leinster bludgeoned Toulouse in that season’s semi and they’ve more recently done the same thing in back-to-back campaigns.
Leo Cullen’s side have had an average of 20 points to spare over Toulouse in their last three semi-final showdowns, racking up a combined 111 points. They’ve scored 11 tries to Toulouse’s three.
Zoom out, and they’ve beaten Toulouse in five Champions Cup knockout games whereas Toulouse have done the same to them only once, in the 2010 semi-final.
Toulouse’s sole European title since 2010 came three years ago, when La Rochelle took out Leinster at the semi-final stage. Leinster have effectively become for Les Toulousains what La Rochelle were to them until April.
Toulouse, their badge decorated with five stars, their rugby refined to a form of high art, are justifiably the poster-boys of European club rugby but no club on the continent has so routinely torn that poster off the wall as Leinster.
Ugo Mola’s side are bigtime. Leo Cullen’s team are their big bad. Finals don’t come much bigger.
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