JEREMY GUSCOTT
OUTSPOKEN AND UNMISSABLE... EVERY WEEK
WHEN Harlequins face Toulouse this afternoon in their first European Cup semi-final in south-west France, it will be one of the biggest games in their history, and the overriding emotion the English club and its supporters will be one of excitement.
Quins have been on the receiving end of a few hidings this season, but it hasn’t stopped them going on a recent run of games in which they’ve played great attacking rugby. It has put them in the mix for a European Cup final, and in contention for a Premiership play-off, which is exactly where you want to be at this stage of the season.
Playing Toulouse on their own patch is like climbing a very steep mountain – but there have been signs this season that it is scalable. Bath went there in the pool stages of this season’s competition and were in close contention for 50 minutes. Exeter also managed to cause Toulouse trouble for the first half-hour of their away quarter-final before being overwhelmed.
Harlequins also have the advantage of having played the French aristocrats at The Stoop in the pool stages. It may not have seemed like an advantage at the time, because they were taken to the cleaners, eventually losing 47-19 and conceding seven tries, but it will have given them a valuable insight into where Toulouse are strongest, and where to plug the gaps.
When you play a side as good as Toulouse you must have belief that the confidence and understanding that took you to a semi-final – and your winning record over the past month – can see you win again.
Toulouse may field a side which has unrivalled depth and talent, with an all-inter national pack, but they have lost games this season, and that is why the Harlequins approach has to be: “Bring it on!”
The heat on Quins will be turned up high, without a doubt, because Toulouse scrum-half Antoine Dupont is the best player in the world.
He didn’t have a great start to the game at The Stoop, but then ‘BOOM!’, he took them apart. Dupont had another quiet start against Exeter, going through the basics at first, but then he flicked the switch and showed the game-changing ability that three or four times in a match scorches the opposition.
If you are playing against someone as gifted as Dupont – or Jonah Lomu before him – you have to go into it with the realisation that they can conjure something from nothing, and that you have to live with it. You have to recognise you can’t always stop them, but you can keep on going back at them. You simply don’t stop trying.
If Leinster, or the Crusaders of old, or even the Italy side from the recent Six Nations, were going to take on Toulouse in France, then I would have the five-time European Cup champions as favourites. To
