Pool 1: Burns’s blunders leave Bath in hot water
It seemed as if all talking points would have to revolve around the 52-3 destruction on Friday night of the former multiple champions Wasps by Leinster – or the Ireland team plus James Lowe, which means the Ireland team in a couple of years’ time. But then Freddie Burns came along. Immediately all talking points became other examples of the flagrant squandering of tries. There are plenty but it is hard to think of any at such a crucial juncture of a game, to cost a team a match and coming so soon after the same player had missed a sitter of a penalty, which would also have won the encounter. It will surely take its toll on Burns. Bath, meanwhile, are sick of wasted opportunities.
• Pool results: Leinster 52-3 Wasps; Bath 20-22 Toulouse
Pool 2: Cipriani the man to unlock Munster?
Of all the chastening results for the English over the first two days perhaps the most sobering was the inability of Exeter, now installed in the top two of the Premiership, to prevail over Munster at home. It is as if they were spooked by having to take on their own doubles. Munster played more like Exeter than Exeter, and vice versa. A dour 616 metres were chiselled out by the relentless ball-carriers, Munster the only side this weekend to fail to average two metres a carry, with 250 from 130. Still, the same tactic makes Thomond Park almost as formidable a lair as it used to be. Gloucester go there next week. The onus is on Danny Cipriani to introduce a different dimension.
• Pool results: Exeter 10-10 Munster; Gloucester 19-14 Castres
Pool 3: Saracens in a class of their own
Injury worries for England after Saracens’ bruising win in Glasgow
If the weekend was a positive one, on the whole, for the Pro14, Pool 3 contained the most encouraging and dispiriting results. Cardiff’s win at Lyon, flying so high in the Top 14, was as invigorating as any the Welsh have managed in Europe. The Blues have been Wales’s great underachievers but they are bristling with back-rows and have serious talent behind. Glasgow, meanwhile, might not be in Leinster’s class but they are fixtures now at or near the top of the Pro14. Here they ran into the Saracens brick wall. They say the Premiership is a two-speed affair. Actually it is three: the others, Exeter and then Saracens – not at their best in Glasgow but brutal and light‑fingered by turns.
• Pool results: Glasgow 3-13 Saracens; Lyon 21-30 Cardiff
Pool 4: Racing’s endurance skills impress
Ulster are a bit of a mess in the Pro14 but that does not need to matter when taking on Leicester at the moment. The Tigers’ capitulation in the second half felt gruesomely familiar. Curiously their England half-backs are playing quite well. George Ford was given a very unfortunate yellow card in the first half but Leicester survived that before falling away in the pouring rain of the second. The jury is still out on Ulster but a trip to Racing next week ought to hasten a verdict. The Parisian club survived the lightning strikes of the Scarlets to clinch a late away victory. They look the likeliest contenders from this pool and from the Top 14 in general.
• Pool results: Scarlets 13-14 Racing; Ulster 24-10 Leicester
Pool 5: Toulon’s woes capture French abjection
A disappointing weekend for the French, and Pool 4 showed them up the most. Toulon have fallen far and fast from the heights of only a handful of years ago. Saracens tore them apart two years ago, the first team to win at Stade Mayol in the Champions Cup. Now Newcastle have become the second, despite currently sitting bottom in the Premiership. Toulon, mind you, are off the relegation zone only by points difference. They look stroppy, uninterested and at times just witless. How are the mighty, etc. Montpellier, meanwhile, very much one of the Top 14’s current leading lights, got away with murder at home to Edinburgh. The Scots were incredibly unlucky to be denied a potentiallywinning try. They may yet surprise in this pool.
• Pool results: Montpellier 21-15 Edinburgh; Toulon 25-26 Newcastle