Club rugby 'steps out of the shadows'

Thursday 24 December 2009
Published By: Ben Welch
Heineken Cup > London Wasps

It's a tough task picking the greatest matches of a given year of world rugby, never mind a decade. Focusing on just the major international tournaments would be the easy option, but the dawn and maturation of professionalism has ensured that club rugby can be just as enthralling.

Robert Kitson of the Guardian has ranked his top ten of the noughties, with four of the top five coming from the Heineken Cup. But the top spot went to the second Test of this summer's Lions tour of South Africa - the 28-25 Springbok victory that immediately passed into rugby folklore.

Of course, the fact that the game was so recent could have an effect on its ranking, but a similar list by Laney of TheSiverFern.com placed the same encounter in second place. The supporter's choices were clearly influenced by support of the All Blacks, with the epic 39-35 victory over the Wallabies in 2000 - a game that didn't make in onto Kitson's list - on top of the pile.

So, what were the grand club games that were able to beat off competition from epic internationals such as the Welsh comeback against France in 2005? Toulouse vs Munster in the 2000 Heineken Cup sime-final is a strong contender, cited as the moment the Irish province lay down a marker for what would be a "decade-long" adventure.

But it's another semi-final in the same tournament that ranks as Kitson's number two. And Munster feature once more, although in 2004 they were on the wrong end of a 37-32 result that saw Wasps prevail after mounting a comeback from ten points behind. Indeed, this was the moment the expert believes saw the professional game step "out of the shadows of international rugby to announce itself as a world-class spectator attraction". Let's just hope the next ten years can offer as much.