Tales of the unexpected: why club rugby is seeing rollercoaster results

Ulster captain Andy Ward dives over for his second try during the Heineken Cup match against Leicester Tigers, back in January 2004. The two clashes between the teams threw up vastly contrasting results. Photograph: Mike Hewitt/Getty ImagesA few of us were chatting the other day with Rob Baxter, Exeter Chief’s director of rugby, about the toughest challenge in rugby.

But, then again, who can say precisely which version of Saracens will turn up? The team who looked totally irresistible when they stuck 50 points on a hapless Harlequins at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium or the well-beaten mob who shipped 40 points at Northampton last Friday night? Bordeaux, meanwhile, did brilliantly to overcome title-chasing Toulouse in the Top 14 last month, only to be firmly put in their place by lowly Lyon at the weekend.

The old Heineken Cup format of home and away pool fixtures on consecutive weeks was a good example, with the outcomes often varying ludicrously from one week to the next. Take a team like Ulster: they would go somewhere like Leicester and lose by a double-digit number before sticking 40 points on them back at Ravenhill. Perhaps the ultimate example was in 2003-04 when they thrashed the Tigers 33-0 in Belfast – only to go to Welford Road the following weekend and go down 49-7.

Because momentum can be devilishly hard to stop if, say, the penalty count dries up and it is no longer possible to kick to the corner, win a lineout and turn the screw. Which is why the incident in the Quins-Bath game, when the prop Irné Herbst was allowed back prematurely from the sin-bin, was a complete shocker. It is less about the actual tackles Herbst made when he was back on the field illegally than the wider range of options open to an increasingly rampant Bath had he stayed off.

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