Wasps
WASPS v RACING METRO 92: MATCH PREVIEW
Lager shandy?
By Dobbin
October 8 2009
Five games down, and it's time to take a break from the grunt and grind of the Premiership for two weeks. Europe beckons, a tantalising land of promise and excitement, of dazzling matches in far-flung locations. The glitz, the glamour, the profile, the superstardom, it's all...ah, phoey! We're not in the Heineken Cup this year, are we? Okay. Scrub that. Let's start again.
Five games into the season, and here we are - a parting of the ways. The seven qualifiers for the Heineken Cup now depart the Guinness Premiership in their designer togs, their eyes fixed on a flirtation with high society: sporting VIP passes and luxury tans, they waltz past the doormen at Crystal for a suave fortnight in the company of the rich and famous. So long, chaps. The rest of us, dressed in jeans and shabby trainers, press our noses up against the glass before turning away with envious glances, and trudging disconsolately towards the nearest spit-and-sawdust side-street discotheque. While the glorious seven cavort in the company of heroes and supermodels, drinking champagne and aiming for the stars, we'll be propping up a rickety bar, downing vodka and Red Bull and thinking of nothing more ambitious than avoiding waking up next to a transvestite. It's foie gras and glittering lights for the seven, cheesy-pineapple and leery lambadas for the also-rans. Welcome to the exotic delights of the Amlin Challenge Cup.
Yes, they've finally found someone to back the Heineken Cup's poor relation. Insurance firm Amlin have come over all charitable and decided to sponsor the European Challenge Cup for the next three years. The format's changing, as well. At the end of the group stages, the five pool winners will be joined in the quarter finals by the three best non-qualifying Heineken Cup second placers – a sprinkling of stardust from the top table to add glamour to the latter stages. Actually, this is a much needed boost to the Challenge Cup's credibility and ERC should be applauded for it. Not that it will make winning the competition any easier.
If history meant anything, then our opponents this weekend, Racing Metro 92, would be dining from the topmost of top-tables. In their former incarnation as Racing Club de France, they won the French championship (and therefore the famous Bouclier de Brennus trophy) five times. But more than their winning record, it is their historical approach to the game that makes you feel they wouldn't be out of place schmoozing with the great and the good. In 1990, their last championship winning season, they famously played the final wearing pink bow-ties, and quaffed champagne at half-time. We might think that Harlequins are posh, but they've never got anywhere near that!
Racing Metro 92 are the result of a 2001 merger between the aforementioned Racing Club de France and the US Metro rugby team (the '92' apparently represents their location in Paris). They were promoted into the French Top 14 this season and have fared moderately well so far, with four wins from nine games. Personnel-wise, they boast many familiar faces – Andrew Mehrtens, Dan Scarborough, Epi Taione, Sebastian Chabal, Andrea Lo Cicero, not to mention French captain Lionel Nallet, fresh from Castres. And South African Francois Steyn, with his howitzer boot, will soon be adding another element of quality to the team.
The question is, how many of these players will be on display on Sunday? In the Challenge Cup, French teams have traditionally had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude at best. Having just been promoted to the Top 14, it would be understandable if European competition is low-down on head coach Pierre Berbizier's list of priorities. The former French scrum-half, who is assisted in his coaching role by another familiar face, ex-Gloucester fly-half Simon Mannix, will not surprise anyone if he names a weakened team to take on Wasps at Adams Park.
But what of the hosts? Where does the Challenge Cup feature in Wasps' ambitions for the season? Well, it offers three things, for my money. First, it's a trophy. It's a competition that's there to be won, and it would be a disappointment if Wasps didn't make a concerted effort to win it – winning, after all, is supposed to be a habit. Tony Hanks and his coaches might see it as an opportunity to look at members of the squad who don't feature regularly in the first XV, as well as to rest those who have featured all too regularly thus far, but I still think that our overriding aim should be to win the thing – for its own sake but also for the second and third reasons, which follow.
The second reason is obvious – winning the Amlin Challenge Cup is a route into the Heineken Cup itself. Obviously we all hope that Wasps can qualify on league position at the end of the season, and we've made a positive start in that respect, but we're less a quarter of the way through the Guinness Premiership and resting on our laurels, although it might be something we seem to do all too regularly in individual matches (!), shouldn't be our mindset in the long game. I'm sure it won't be.
The third thing that the Challenge Cup offers is less tangible. Think back to 2003. The season before, Wasps had finished seventh in the league after flirting dangerously with relegation, and failed to qualify for the Heineken Cup. We were in what was then known as the Parker Pen Challenge Cup. It was Warren Gatland's first full season in charge - a new start, a chance to wipe the slate clean. The Parker Pen had never seemed like much of a competition, nothing to get too excited about, and surely the main aim was to establish the club once again amongst the domestic title contenders. Nevertheless, we began to advance through the European competition, topping our group and moving into the quarter final. And there we faced a familiar opponent – Stade Francais.
I think it's safe to say that in our previous four meetings with the French club, in the previous two seasons' Heineken Cups, we hadn't exactly covered ourselves in glory. Particularly in Paris, where we'd had some torrid encounters, culminating in a wretched 31-0 loss in January 2002. But now a chance for redemption had arrived, a chance to to show that a new Wasps had developed under Gatland and Edwards – one that didn't wilt at the first sight of a Frenchman (Florent Rossigneux aside), one that didn't miserably scuff kicks in front of the posts straight under the bar!
The quarter final was a two-legged affair, with the first match at home. And on 12th January 2003, exactly one year after hitting rock-bottom in Paris, we beat Stade Francais! Two years of defeat were turned round into a 35-22, four-try-to-one victory (Abbott, Dallaglio, Waters and Rudd, for the record). What's more, a week later we went to Paris and won there as well. Suddenly the lowly old Parker Pen Cup had become a symbol of the team's renaissance under the new regime. The semi-finals saw Pontypridd swept away in much the same manner as Stade, and then came the final against Bath. 48-30 was the final score, in possibly the most open, flowing, end-to-end, gloriously sun-baked final ever witnessed. And at the end of it a trophy – not especially earth-shattering in itself, but full of meaning for the club. Three seasons later, with three Premiership titles and one Heineken Cup under our belts, it seemed like that Parker Pen Cup victory had been the trigger for what turned out to be a golden era in Wasps' history.
So there you have it: the third reason why we should be trying our damndest to win the Amlin Challenge Cup this season. I'm not a believer in omens, but we have a new man at the helm after a season of disappointment, we're in the second tier European tournament after failing to qualify for the Heineken, and we're playing a team from Paris. Maybe, after all, there's something good to be gained from sitting in that spit-and-sawdust, side street discotheque, propping up the rickety bar while the magnificent seven live it up in Crystal.
Just as long as we don't wake up next to a transvestite.
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Cheers
Rick
@W2APS on twitter, the chap with the banners and flags.
I've heard that the Royal British Legion will be starting the Poppy Day Appeal at Adams Park.
Nothing on the offy and nothing elsewhere.
BTW with regards to the "92" - something the Frenchies do occasionally, add in the department number. Gives it a geographic link, which would be understood by the Frenchies (whether or not in this sporting context it gives some form of emotional attatchment is another matter). 92 is Seine-St Denis, technically not Paris at all. Outside the peripherique from 11 o'clock-is to 3 o'clock-ish.
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James
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James
Bloody freezing, bloody wet.
Trevor came over at full time for a cigarette and a beer!
KevinTheB
www.justgiving.com/kevinbroadbent
Sorry about that - was a bit of a rush job I'm afraid.
Heartiest congratulations on another superb piece of work.
KevinTheB
www.justgiving.com/kevinbroadbent
Quote:James.
BTW with regards to the "92" - something the Frenchies do occasionally, add in the department number. Gives it a geographic link, which would be understood by the Frenchies (whether or not in this sporting context it gives some form of emotional attatchment is another matter). 92 is Seine-St Denis, technically not Paris at all. Outside the peripherique from 11 o'clock-is to 3 o'clock-ish.
Hello, in first time i want to said sorry for my English...
92 is not Seine saint denis (-> 93) but Haut de Seine in south to Paris
...
I think that Racing don't come in england with is best team (the objectif for the season is TOP14) and we have so much injurie player... But if we can win we will make
Good luck for the match
Ah, those days of yore ...
KevinTheB
www.justgiving.com/kevinbroadbent
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009:10:09:15:41:49 by KevinTheB.
Beating a side which had stuffed us there, a year earlier, really gave us the confidence which enabled us to complete two doubles in two years.
My abiding memory is of the final few minutes. The game was dead, as we were miles ahead, and Stade were playing for pride, and a consolation try. It would have been easy for the guys to have eased off, knowing that they were safely through.
Instead, they put in a defensive effort which was on a par with the end of last weekend's game. Stade never got that consolation score.
That victory could never have been achieved without the team being entirely focused on the competition they were in, rather than the one they wished they were in.
