THE SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS
By Lewis Stuart
Scottish Cup dreams loom this time of year and Glasgow may be the best bet
Comment
IT IS that time of year again. The period in the season when the Scottish teams wheel out the coaches and players to declare that they can take the Heineken Cup by the scruff of the neck, shake it about a bit and head off to that Terra Incognito otherwise known as the knockout stages.

Barring 2003 when Edinburgh surprised everybody by doing just that, history suggests that brave words have usually been followed by abject collapse. Can this year be any different?

By the end of next Sunday we will know for sure. By then Edinburgh will have had their sniff at Toulouse and Glasgow will be on their way back from Watford after playing Saracens. Defeat for either will end that club's effective interest in the rest of the tournament.

advertisementTo be fair to Edinburgh, they have been keeping a low profile in the build up to the competition, hardly surprising since they have Leicester, English champions and last season's beaten finalists in their group along with Toulouse, the French giants who reached three consecutive finals between 2003 and 2005, winning two of them, and Leinster, who are desperate to emulate their rivals at Munster by winning the crown.

Andy Robinson, the Edinburgh coach, points out that all three are among the sides being tipped to win the title, and makes no bones of the challenge facing his team during a period of rebuilding after a year of disruption and confusion.

Which is why the match against Toulouse is so important. Give the Scots the confidence boost of an early win against a club with the reputation and clout of their French opponents and watch the belief flood into the side. Robinson knows there is no quicker way to bring a side together than to claim a scalp that matters.

As the Scots know, it is far from impossible. Toulouse are also in a rebuilding phase. Thanks to the World Cup, they have played only two competitive games, scraping a narrow win against newly promoted Dax in the first before taking on injury-ravaged Stade Francais this weekend.

Nobody at Murrayfield needs reminding that in similar circumstances four years ago they did manage to defeat a Toulouse side still suffering the after effects of their substantial contribution to France's World Cup effort. This time there is the added bonus that the national players are still getting over the disappointment of their own under-performance in the semi final against England and bronze play-off against Argentina.

The problem is that however good (or otherwise) Toulouse are, Edinburgh are not as strong at the moment as they were four years ago when Chris Paterson was playing out of his skin as an attacking fly half, Brendan Laney added experience to the midfield and Todd Blackadder was an inspirational leader.

Not only that, but having lost Simon Taylor to Stade Francais, David Callam will miss the early rounds with a knee injury, so that the club's back row resources are starting to look a bit stretched against a side that are likely to include the likes of Yannick Nyanga and Thierry Dusautoir from the French World Cup squad alongside the power of Finau Maka.

Even the most diehard Edinburgh supporter knows that victory is a long shot, depending as much on Toulouse turning up with their minds elsewhere as on anything that the Scots can muster.

Then 24 hours later, comes Glasgow's turn. They may be away at Saracens, third in the Guinness Premiership, but they fancy their chances more with justification. They faced the same opponents in the European Challenge Cup three times last season and though they lost two and drew the other, there was never more than a single score in it. Since then, Glasgow have strengthened their squad and they travel feeling that they are a lot better equipped to rock the English side than they were a year ago.

When all the fancy analysis is done, the game will probably come down to self belief and Moray Low. In the equivalent game last year, the total destruction of the Glasgow scrum paved the way for Saracens to win by five points, and since have strengthened that unit further, adding the likes of Cencus Johnston, the Samoan World Cup prop, to an impressive array of talent, they are expecting to do the same again. Low, on the Glasgow tighthead, is the key to making sure they don't.

There have been encouraging signs - not least the way that the Glasgow pack coped with the Munster unit last week - but if Saracens decide to start with the likes of Cobus Visagie and Kevin Yates they will face a much sterner technical test of their scrum, a test they have to pass to hope for victory.

If they are able to pinch an away win at the start of the campaign, that would set them up for a run to the quarter final regardless of how they get on against Biarritz, the French giants, who they play home and away in December. Not only are the Basques capable of imploding spectacularly - as they almost did at home to the Borders and did in the quarter final - but they still tend to go into their shell away from home.

Not only that but with Viadana making up the numbers in the Glasgow pool - a few big names but also a lot of also-rans - it is possible for them to emulate Northampton last season and lose to Biarritz and still make it through to the next stage. But only if they beat Saracens next week.

So the answer to the question: yes this year can be different. But in all honesty, if there is to be a second breakthrough it will come from the west, not the east.

This article was posted on 4-Nov-2007, 09:08 by Hugh Barrow.