Allan Massie: Sudden death must be preferable to the cruel agonies of a shoot-out

Published on Friday 8 May 2009 23:12

TWO splendid Heineken semi-finals were marred by the unsatisfactory resort to rugby's equivalent of football's penalty shoot-out to decide whether Leicester or Cardiff Blues went through to the final.

It's not an exact equivalent. Every player in a football team may have the chance to shoot and score a goal, but only three or four at most in a rugby XV ever have to take a place-kick in a match. Moreover, it's a cruel way to reach a decision; there can't have been anyone watching who didn't feel sorry for Martyn Williams.

It would be much better surely to adopt the Sevens rule, and go for sudden death – first team to score – if both are level after extra-time. This might of course mean that the result was decided by a possibly debatable decision to award a penalty. But what's new about that? Plenty of matches are settled that way in injury time. And in any case the penalty would still have to be kicked.

Leinster upset more than one apple-cart by their resounding defeat of Munster, one of the carts belonging to Ian McGeechan, who had selected seven Munstermen for his Lions squad, the captain among them. It couldn't be said that Munster crumpled as the Ospreys, with their five Lions on the field, had crumpled against them at Thomond Park a fortnight previously. But they were well beaten at the breakdown and had run out of ideas long before the end. Paul O'Connell struggled manfully as you would expect, but couldn't lift his team. Will he be able to lift the Lions when they are beaten at the breakdown?

Alan Quinlan may not be on the plane to South Africa, a consequence of his alleged attempt to re-arrange Leo Cullen's right eye. Tough on him, for he has been a great player for Munster, if rarely for Ireland, but if he is suspended McGeechan will at least be able to repair one of his errors – the omission of Leicester's Tom Croft. Tomas O'Leary's misfortune allows McGeechan to correct another error and select either Mike Blair or Chris Cusiter. In the context of their omission, it was interesting to see that the Lions' second-choice scrum-half, Harry Ellis, is only second choice for Leicester too, the Frenchman Julien Dupuy being preferred.

Nine of the 30 players who started the match at Croke Park are not eligible for Ireland. Likewise at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff started with either three or four non-Welshmen and Leicester with six non-Englishmen. There's nothing wrong with this and indeed the cosmopolitan nature of the best club sides contributes both to their success and their appeal. That appeal is now remarkable. There were more than 80,000 people at Croke Park; a dozen years ago an inter-provincial match between Leinster and Munster drew a crowd numbered in hundreds, not tens of thousands. Indeed there would many more spectators at the Leinster Schools final. Whatever the quality of play in this year's Six Nations, however badly the Lions may fare in South Africa, it's undeniable that professional club rugby has been a huge success everywhere.

Not quite everywhere, alas, everywhere but Scotland. Both Edinburgh and Glasgow have had fairly good seasons and Edinburgh may yet finish in the top three of the Magners League. It's true also that crowds have been better this season, but they are still poor in comparison with those elsewhere. Moreover, as I have remarked before, and shall doubtless remark too often in the future, the dice are heavily loaded against the Scottish sides. Take the foreigners out of Munster, Leinster, Cardiff and Leicester, and Edinburgh, who have usually this season fielded 15 Scots in their starting team, would fancy their chances against any of them.

Yet for reasons frequently rehearsed the Scottish clubs can't field foreigners as their strongest opponents do. This is first because our two pro teams are owned by the SRU and are regarded, of necessity, as feeders for the national team; and second, because they can't afford to recruit top-level players. Andy Robinson would have liked to sign the Australian Rocky Elsom last summer. He couldn't pay the price. Elsom went to Leinster, and was outstanding last week – to my mind, the real man-of-the-match.

Now it may be that our concentration on home talent will eventually pay off, and that Irish rugby may be in difficulties when their present "golden generation" of players retire, leaving Munster and Leinster too reliant on imports. That day is not far off. The average age of the Munster team last week was well over 30; the average age of Edinburgh's first-choice XV is about 26. But for the moment the odds are against Edinburgh and Glasgow, and one cannot avoid the thought that their chances of making a mark in next year's Heineken, and so at last drawing big crowds, would be greatly improved if they were each able to recruit one or two experienced southern hemisphere internationalists.

Many of the handful of non-Scottish players who have come here have certainly made a valuable contribution, but few have had the transforming effect that Jim Williams had at Munster and Rocky Elsom is now having at Leinster. One or two may have come merely in search of a couple of years' income in the evening of their career, but most have given something valuable to rugby here. Edinburgh's New Zealand scrum-half, Ben Meyer, is one such.

Behind Mike Blair and falling behind young Greig Laidlaw this season, he has been happy to turn out for Selkirk, even to play – very well – out of position at flanker.

A real rugby man whom we'll miss at Philiphaugh.