I want Toulouse to beat Leinster and here's why: lovable club, Irish rugby envy - and Blair Kinghorn

Champions Cup final likely to be a classic with Scottish interest

There is no underdog for a romantic to back in the Champions Cup final. Leinster and Toulouse are surely the two best clubs in Europe. That said, it’s quite some time since Toulouse have won the trophy, none of the present team having a medal.

While Leinster were beaten by La Rochelle in the last two finals, they have had their revenge at the semi-final stage this year. There are naturally great players on both sides. For us, there is of course special interest in the appearance of Blair Kinghorn in the Toulouse XV. It’s a measure of his performance since moving from Edinburgh that he has been selected at full-back ahead of Thomas Ramos, first choice for France and perhaps the best goal-kicker in the Six Nations. If Toulouse win he will, I think, be the first Scot to collect a winner’s medal since Sean Maitland did so with Saracens.

Matches, the old adage has it, are won by the forwards, while backs decide the margin of victory. Maybe this was true once. It not longer is, and not only because so many tries are scored by forwards, many, but by no means all, from the rolling maul. I can’t see either pack getting consistent superiority today.

Blair Kinghorn of Toulouse celebrates after scoring their fifth try against Exeter Chiefs.

Yet the two most important players today are probably the scrum-halves. Everyone recognises Antoine Dupont’s rare quality. His vision, pace, strength and technical skill are outstanding. He makes tries, often from deep, and scores them. One experienced rugby writer suggested the other day that he was not challenging Gareth Edwards as the greatest No 9 ever. The game has changed so much since Gareth’s day that such comparisons, however tempting, can’t reasonably be sustained, though we all delight to make them. What is certain is that Gareth was a joy to watch and so is Antoine now.

That probably wouldn’t be said of Leinster’s Jamison Gibson-Park, but he has surely become the most important player in the team for both Leinster and Ireland, a master strategist, maker of opportunities and scorer of tries himself. His development since coming to Ireland from his native New Zealand has been remarkable. At Leinster he was first regarded as back-up to Luke McGrath, regarded as probably successor to Munster’s Conor Murray in the Ireland team. Now, though less eye-catching, less flamboyant, than Dupont, he is just as indispensable. It’s tempting to say that whichever has the better game will decide the result today.

There is an equally interesting contrast at fly-half. I love watching Romain Ntamack, now recovered from the injury that had him miss both the World Cup and this year’s Six Nations. He is the coolest player who seems, as the great New Zealand rugby writer Terry McLean long ago said of Ken Scotland, to float like thistledown through defences. He makes mistakes of course, as all fly-halves do, but never seems flustered or unnerved by them, in this being of course just like Finn Russell.

If Dupont revives memories of Gaeth Edwards, there is something of Barry John in Ntamack. Barry was said to enter a room without being seen to come through the door; likewise Ntamack. Leinster’s Ross Byrne is a fine player with something to prove. Long seen as Johnny Sexton’s heir for both club and country, he found Munster’s Jack Crowley preferred by Andy Farrell for the Six Nations this year. This was tough on Byrne. Though Crowley played very well in the tournament, Byrne has an opportunity today to show that suspicions he lacks the big-match temperament are unjustified.

A general view of the Investec Champions Cup trophy.

Given the quality of both teams this may be a great final. Neither side one would think, liable to freeze or turn the game into a kicking contest. Though Toulouse have won five Champions Cups, the last one was some time ago, while Leinster have lost their last three finals, twice to La Rochelle, once to Saracens, Then, though Ireland are Six Nations Champions, many of both teams will surely have the disappointment of their countries’ dashed hopes in the World Cup last autumn, the French, and Dupont himself especially.

I confess to hoping Toulouse win, partly because I have always delighted in their rugby, partly – and I suppose deplorably – because like many Scots I I am rather jealous of Irish rugby now as used not to be the case when we mostly tended to support Ireland against anybody but Scotland in the Five Nations. That said, while impossible not to admire Leinster, Toulouse are a club I can love as well as admire. Anyway, it would be good to see Blair Kinghorn scoring a try, perhaps even the match-winning one.