Champions Cup fulfils promise and serves up tasty quarter-final menu

This year’s Champions Cup has delivered a quarter-final lineup worthy of the competition’s grand standing in the game. Montpellier, Leicester and Leinster – respectively, leaders of the French and English leagues plus the multinational United Championship – are there. Toulouse – the Champions Cup holders and most successful club in the tournament’s history with five wins – are also in the mix. As are La Rochelle, finalists last season, and the two-time winners Munster.

There is, however, a mismatch in the draw as one side of the equation is stacked with past champions while the other half can only point to four unsuccessful finals as a sign of their collective continental pedigree.

Leicester, back-to-back champions in 2001 and 2002, were not at their best on Saturday in a 27-17 win against Clermont, but still took the tie with a commanding 56-27 aggregate score. “It was piss poor,” was the captain Ellis Genge’s assessment of a staccato display that lacked the usual precision of a unit coached by Steve Borthwick.

“It’s not what we are about,” Genge said. “We train really, really tough and not to produce stuff like that. We’ve had a bollocking and we’ll sort it.”

They will have to if they have any design on beating the four-time winners Leinster, who are in imperious form and dispatched Connacht 56-20 in Dublin on Friday. “Leinster are big-game players and big boys,” Genge said. “We’ve got to be on our jobs.”

Munster are 10 points behind their rivals in the Irish pool of the United Championship but were equally impressive in beating Exeter 26-10 in Limerick, overcoming a first-leg defeat in Devon. They next host Toulouse, who needed a 75th-minute try from Antoine Dupont to edge Ulster by a single point on aggregate.

Betwee