Jamison Gibson-Park v Antoine Dupont duel adds spice to Leinster-Toulouse showdown

The Champions Cup finalists have been revealed following two enthralling semi-finals last weekend.

Leinster will face Toulouse in London in the final showdown that most neutrals would have wanted. Both teams raced into strong leads in their respective semis, only to relinquish control to the opposition in the second half, making the games more of a contest than they could have been.

Northampton struggled to get a foothold in the first half against Leinster. They had nine handling errors in 25 minutes and found it hard to build any phases to worry Leinster.

While the Northampton defence was ferocious, they gave Leinster too many entries into their territory; and Leo Cullen's outfit are a side that don't need a second invitation to convert those entries to points.

Northampton also lost the penalty count heavily enough. It was 6-1 with regards to penalty concessions in the first 30 minutes, giving Leinster more access than the visitors would have liked.

Jamison Gibson-Park was the fulcrum of everything that went well for Leinster. An interesting sub plot in the final in London will be the tale of two of the game’s most influential scrum-halves, when Gibson-Park squares off against Antoine Dupont.

Dupont played a similar role for Toulouse at the weekend, taking just seven minutes to make a line break from a maul. He scored two tries from line breaks where he gained a total of two metres for his 10 points, picking the ball quickly from the ruck before the defence could get back to set.

The speed of ball that both scrum-halves play with will make the final an epic contest. The added complication with that speed of ball will be the power in both forward units and their competitiveness at the breakdown.

We know that Leinster like to