Tottenham may feel a peculiar place for a clash of rugby royalty but this weekend the battle lines will be drawn up the High Road for a meeting of the kings and conquerors of Europe. Leinster and Toulouse roll into Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this weekend as the two dominant dynasties in European club rugby, yet never before have the Gallic and Gaelic giants collided on coronation day.
So much of the recent rugby past has been sung in triumphant French and Irish tones, and a first final between these two feels a fitting climax to the Investec Champions Cup campaign. The pair share nine European titles between them, Leinster bidding to draw level with their French opposition and add a fifth star to their chest – it is peculiar that two perennial contenders have never come together on this stage but this long-awaited collision should be mighty.
“Everyone wants to win but here it’s definitely an expectation,” Toulouse lock Emmanuel Meafou said this week. “They’re historically successful and they want to keep it that way.
“To win and win convincingly is always the bar, we don’t aim for anything lower. We know what we’re capable of. We like our chances and we’re going to give it our best.”
On and off the pitch, these are two model rugby enterprises. While many have been grown into Galacticos by their environments, both sides are built around a domestic core of homegrown talent. The production lines showing no signs of slowing: centre cadets Paul Costes (Toulouse) and Jamie Osborne (Leinster) will surely soon join their club colleagues in international colours.
Individual battles litter the teamsheets. Peato Mauvaka and Dan Sheehan can just about rival one another in the athletic stakes but are in their own tier as all-court hookers, while Cyril Baille and Tadhg Furlong’s scrum duel could be decisive. Jamison Gibson-Park is perhaps the only scrum half remotely close to Antoine Dupont’s orbit; James Lowe and Blair Kinghorn’s big boots will boom back and forth in the kicking exchanges.
There is a fundamental schism in attacking philosophies that only further textures the tapestry of the encounter. Where Leinster are fluent in phase play with pointillist precision, Toulouse’s free thinkers express themselves with bold splashes of colour in contact – no side in the world has bettered the accuracy of their offloading rate this season.
Dupont remains their arch-artiste, the soon-to-be Olympian a superstar even in this illustrious company. “The boys joke around and call him ‘The Martian’, like he’s not from Earth, he’s an alien,” Meafou revealed. “The stuff he’s done in games is only half of what he’s capable of. He does some stuff at training where you can’t do anything but shake your head and just wish you could do that, too.”
Creating meteor showers for Dupont to navigate through will be key for Leinster, whose defence is now drilled by World Cup winner Jacques Nienaber. A key tenet of the system favoured by the former Springboks coach is to busy and bother the breakdown, creating a contest and allowing the blitz to recover and reform. It is a strategy that has worked well against Toulouse in the past but the French side have the brawn and brilliance to capitalise on any inaccuracy.
This is a weekend of real importance for Leinster after consecutive final near misses against La Rochelle, including on home soil last year. So much of what the Dubliners do is outstanding but this generation have not yet managed to mark the superiority they have shown with silverware. Two trophyless seasons have already come and gone, and while their players insist there is no added pressure, another defeat would bring about genuine questions.
“Every final has its own pressure so for us, it’s about going out and putting on the best performance we can,” fly-half Ross Byrne explained this week. “I think it was important [to beat La Rochelle twice this year] – we’ve had some harsh lessons over the last couple of years so it was trying to take what we learned from those games and trying to put them right. We know how tough it’s going to be on Saturday but we are looking forward to it."
An almost direct clash with the FA Cup final is not ideal with the Champions Cup far from the only show in London town this weekend. The football also relegates rugby to one of ITV’s minor channels, equally unfortunate given the uncertainty over this competition’s future with a TV deal for next season still not announced.
But EPCR’s signing up of Investec as a new title sponsor was seen as something of a coup a year ago, the brand’s South African roots and European prominence helping the bank be a perfect partner. After so much tinkering to facilitate the entry of the South African sides to the URC, a stable format should be helpful as organisers look to restore this tournament to former glories.
They will count on the final delivering, as it so often does. Seldom does this stage serve up a stinker, the last four editions decided by a single score and contested in fierce, frantic fashion. Both Leinster and Toulouse have the style and the substance to serve up another Champions Cup classic.
The Champions Cup will kick off at 2.45pm, live on ITV4 and TNT Sports
