Heineken Cup Week 4 Round-up

19 December 2011

Round 4 of the Heineken Cup saw return fixtures offering plenty of surprises. Leicester held off Clermont, Gloucester narrowly beat Connacht at Kingsholm whilst Leinster thrashed Bath in a seven try thriller.

One of the biggest shocks of the weekend was Northampton's 45-0 thrashing of Castres, a side they lost to the previous week and Harlequins managed to beat four-time Heineken Cup champions, Toulouse, a side they had also lost to the previous week.

Conor O'Shea was very happy with his sides victory over Toulouse and said "It feels like we've won a cup final but it's a pool game." He added "We have to make sure we keep learning."

"We won't stick our heads in the sand and say it was a perfect performance - but these are the days that make the Heineken Cup and the games you are judged on," O'Shea said.

Leinster had an outstanding performance, putting seven tries past Bath in front of over 45,000 people at the Aviva Stadium. Leinster chief coach, Joe Schmidt said “Some of our handling and some of the running lines were superb.”

But Schmidt expected his players to put maximum effort in throughout and said “We are obviously delighted to get five points, but we eased off towards the end which was disappointing.”

Clermont couldn’t manage back-to-back wins against Leicester but coach Vern Cotter expressed their players motivation to reach the final stages of the tournament. “We’ve had one quarter-final in the Heineken Cup and our boys would love to have recognition on the European stage – it would be great.”

But Cotter remained realistic about their chances and said “Ulster are still in, Leicester are still in and we are still in. I know this Leicester team is capable of getting a result against Ulster so nothing is done yet.”

Niall O’Connor was one of the stars of the weekend despite being on a losing side. Connacht fought right to the death to see an end to their losing streak but a last gasp try from Gloucester’s Jonny May prevented that from happening.

Connacht head coach Eric Elwood said “We felt this was the night we would end our losing streak and after the effort and commitment, it is a quiet dressing room.”

He added “We were in control of our own destiny and to lose it like we did after all the good rugby we played was difficult to take.”

Jim Mallinder, whose Northampton side are now effectively out of the Heineken Cup, said "I think we could have scored a couple of tries in the first half. We got close to their line a few times but didn't quite finish them off. I was always confident we were in control of the game and that's what we talked about at half time."

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