Leinster v Toulouse: a rivalry in which the Blues have become the bogeymen

WHEN YOU CONSIDER that, between them, they have won almost a third of all the European Cups ever played, it feels like a statistical anomaly that Leinster and Toulouse will this weekend meet for the first time in a final.

It speaks to the heft of both institutions that, on average, Leinster and Toulouse have crossed paths roughly every third season across three decades of club rugby’s greatest competition. It’s mad to think that it all kicked off at Donnybrook. It was far from a rivalry when reigning European champions Toulouse visited Dublin in 1997, overcoming plucky Leinster side 34-25 in their Heineken Cup pool before running out 19-point winners in the reverse fixture.

Leinster’s next trip to La Ville Rose, though, foreshadowed an entire era of Irish rugby. Their 41-35 success over the European kings in the sides’ 2006 quarter-final will forever remain a prominent in the eastern province’s Champions Cup iconography. In the fullness of time, losing that game might have been Toulouse’s greatest ever balls-up; not because they deserved to win it, but because they opened the door to the bogeyman.

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