Head says Leinster or Chiefs but heart says the French

I ONLY ever got to play in three Heineken Cup quarter-finals and the Ospreys lost the lot. We went to Saracens, Munster and Biarritz in consecutive seasons and failed to go through. We lost at Vicarage Road to Saracens in 2008, not long after we had hammered them in the Anglo-Welsh Cup semi- finals, and got beaten 19-10. The next year we went down 43-9 to Munster at Thomond Park and then saw Damien Traille drop three goals to give Biarritz a 29-28 win over us in Bilbao in 2010. It remains one of the biggest misses in my career that I didn’t experience the thrill of playing in a European final. It was the crème de la crème in those days and this weekend’s quarter-finals won’t be any different. How do you pick a winner out of the teams that are left? My head says Leinster or Exeter Chiefs, but my heart is with Toulouse or Clermont Auvergne – that try by Toulouse scrum-half Antoine Dupont against Clermont last week was something else. The problem with all this theory is that Saracens could well go to Dublin and beat Leinster, Ulster proved last weekend in beating Edinburgh that they can raise their game on the road and could therefore pip Toulouse, while Clermont will be wary of the pace and power of Racing 92, even at home. The Chiefs welcome Northampton Saints to Sandy Park and that looks like a tall order for the visitors. But who knows? What we can expect is the highest level of rugby we’ve seen in the northern hemisphere since the game emerged from lockdown.