WHEREAS last year was undoubtedly Ireland’s year in rugby terms this year looks increasingly like the year of the French.
They have won the Grand Slam already, Toulon play Cardiiff in the Amlin Challenge Cup final in Marseille and Toulouse will play Biaritz in Paris on 23 May in the Heineken Cup final.
We were beaten 26-16 by a very strong Toulouse side on Saturday and Munster were beaten 187 on Sunday by Biarritz in San Sebastian.
It is a huge regret of mine and this Leinster team that we were unable to become only the second side in history to win back-to-back Heineken cups.
But we can have no real complaints as the old cliché held firm on Saturday in that forwards decide who wins matches and backs decide by how much.
We were dominated at the scrum and they mauled us up and down the field which was the foundation of their win. In the pre-game analysis we did we respected their scrum but to be honest we didn’t envisage it giving us the problems that it did.
Afterwards, as the front row, we realised we should have collapsed every scrum and made that area of the match an absolute mess.
Usually when that happens the referee starts penalising both teams which would have been an improvement on what we actually achieved in this area.
The atmosphere in the stadium was electric and I would have loved to have got on the field and played a part.
Unfortunately I was diagnosed with the shingles by our doctor on Thursday and while I was cleared to sub the coaches didn’t risk putting me on.
Toulouse are a quality side and I fancy them to go on now and win it outright. Their bench is very strong and the funny thing is that while they have a reputation for throwing the ball around they actually play a very controlled type of game plan with a huge amount of kicking for territory.
The killed us in about five minutes with two well-taken tries and we were always chasing the match thereafter.
We flew home Saturday night after the match and I watched the Munster/Biarritz match from my couch.
I really thought Munster would win but full credit to Biarritz they deserved their victory.
The draw is a huge thing in this competition and once Leinster and Munster were drawn away it was always going to be difficult to progress.
We must now focus on the Magners League and we finish our last pool match with a home game against Edinburgh on Sunday at the RDS.
We need to win that game to be guaranteed a home semi, a top seeding and Edinburgh need a bonus point win to make the play offs so it should be an entertaining match. We owe it to our fans to finish the season on a high and win the Magners even though it will be incredibly difficult.
This week will be all about getting our heads right for the last three weeks of the season and hopefully giving Michael Cheika the send off that he deserves before he takes over Stade Francais over the summer.
We need to get over the disappointment of Saturday quickly or else we will look back on this season as an opportunity lost despite all our hard work.