Who’s hot and who’s not: ‘Transformed’ Glasgow, Munster ‘misery’ and the ‘only upside’ to Scott Robertson ‘mess’
It was a weekend of celebration for Sione Tuipulotu's Glasgow and disaster for Edwin Edogbo's Munster (INPHO)
It’s time for our Monday wrap of who has their name in lights and who is making the headlines for all the wrong reasons after the weekend.
THEY’RE ON FIRE!
Glasgow: No one, not even Glasgow’s most avid fan, would have bet the house on Franco Smith’s team finishing their Investec Champions Cup pool campaign with a maximum 20 points from four wins. Facing daunting home fixtures versus former champions Toulouse and Saracens, as well as going away to Sale and Clermont, it seemed like a winter of slim pickings.
Instead, there has been a harvest like never before, and the suffocating manner of the latest Glasgow victory, 28-3 versus an overwhelmed Saracens on Sunday night, suggested they are very much a team transformed from last year’s 52-0 quarter-final hammering at Leinster. Players such as George Horne and Jack Dempsey were on fire at the weekend, and it was encouraging to hear bossman Smith in the aftermath insist: “This is just the start; there’s more than half the season still left.”
Next up are the Bulls at home in April, and the Warriors, thanks to the No.2 seeding after the pool stage, can also play at Scotstoun in the quarter-final and in Scotland in the semi-finals. In other words, they will never have a better opportunity than this year to reach a first Champions Cup final.
Investec Champions Cup: Round of 16 draw confirmed as path to Bilbao emerges
Matthieu Jalibert and LBB: The Bristol rain and the greasy Ashton Gate surface shouldn’t have been the situation for Bordeaux duo Matthieu Jalibert and Louis Bielle-Biarrey to show off their attacking prowess on Sunday, but they did just that to usher the defending Champions Cup champions through to the Round of 16 as the No.1 seed. With Romain Ntamack anticipated to miss the opening rounds of next month’s Six Nations due to a kidney injury, the pathway appears to be clear for Jalibert to return to a France team he hasn’t represented since last February’s loss to England.
For whatever reason, he has always been too easily discarded by Fabien Galthie when another option is available, but Jalibert’s is playing with such devastating poise that he surely can’t be ignored for the No.10 shirt versus Ireland on February 5. The way he stylishly counterattacked from his own 10-metre line to reach the opposition 22 and give the pass to Bielle-Biarrey for Bordeaux’s opening try in their 27-15 win at the Bears was exquisite.
So too, LBB, who finished the match with a hat-trick. His ability to score no matter what the conditions or how limited his chances are is triggering – check out his determination to pressure Bristol and complete his hat-trick right at the death. That’s what you call stubbornness, and the opportunistic score was beautifully executed.
Toulouse: There was a time on Saturday afternoon when the six-time Champions Cup champions were staring at the abyss… the Sharks’ lunchtime win over Clermont had shunted the French aristocrats down into fifth spot in Pool 1 and left them facing an unthinkable elimination from the tournament following losses at Glasgow and Saracens.
However, they warded off the potential crisis by bagging the four-try bonus point on the stroke of half-time, and they then ran amok in the second half to inflict a record 77-7 defeat on the toothless Sale Sharks. Nine players got on the scoresheet in their 11-try hammering of the English visitors, and adding to the polish was Thomas Ramos, the French national team kicker, who successfully converted all 11 tries.
The reward for Toulouse’s irrepressible attack, led by the two-try Antoine Dupont, was a second-place finish in the pool, earning them a home tie against Bristol in the Round of 16. It was a masterclass response to the previous weekend’s adversity in London.
Harlequins: It was January 4 when the London club released a brutal statement, admitting that “performances and results in the men’s team are not at the level we expect and are not considered acceptable by anyone within the club”. The succinct message, issued by CEO Laurie Dalrymple and chairman David Morgan, was an emotional response to the 66-21 PREM Rugby hammering inflicted on them the previous day by Northampton.
What was so bluntly said could have drastically gone two ways: either it would concentrate minds and produce a stinging uptick in performances, or else the administrators would lose a hurting dressing room and would never be trusted again. Much to the relief of Dalrymple and Morgan, the results have soared. Yes, an asterisk must be attached to Quins’ 61-10 dismissal of the Stormers, as the South Africans sent a shadow XV to London.
However, the merit of Sunday’s shock win at La Rochelle can’t be debated – it was the real thing. The ticker shown by a Marcus Smith-inspired side nourished the soul, and there is no reason why they can’t take this momentum into the league next Saturday when they host Leicester and also aspire to reaching the Champions Cup quarter-finals in April after securing a home Round of 16 tie against Sale.
Edoardo Todaro: Not a week seems to go by at Northampton without the irresistible Henry Pollock generating the headlines, but Sunday heralded a change to that pattern and had eyes locked on the footwork and handling of the deadly 19-year-old Italian, who is surely now a contender for PREM Rugby’s best newcomer this season.
We love a positive grassroots story at Planet Rugby, and seemingly a comment by Todaro’s mother on a YouTube video post by Ipswich School resulted in her boy enrolling at the start of Year 10. His emergence with the Italy U20s then made him eligible for a sporting visa to progress into the Saints senior academy, and the rest is history… a Test debut in November against Chile and nine tries in 11 Champions Cup/Prem Rugby starts this term.
His potency was certainly showcased against the plucky Scarlets, and his first-half hat-trick in Northampton’s 43-28 win meant he had scored five tries in five appearances since copping a two-match ban for a red card at Bristol. That’s an inspired response to getting sent off.
COLD AS ICE!
Munster: No fan of the Irish province saw this coming – a disastrous Champions Cup pool elimination for the first time since 2015/16. It was just 13 weeks ago when they nailed one of their best wins in recent times, hammering Leinster 31-14 at Croke Park, but their level of performance since the November break for Ireland’s Autumn Nations Series has generally been abysmal.
Yes, they have a genuine gripe that the curious penalty awarded by referee Karl Dickson to enable Toulon to beat them at the death last weekend in France was terrible, but it’s difficult to feel sympathy about a run where a common thread in the loss of six matches in eight – and the last four on the bounce – is indiscipline. A half-dozen yellow cards have been handed down, and adequately coping with having just 14 players is an ongoing issue.
They were 22-17 up against Castres when Tom Farrell was sin-binned last Saturday, 22-31 down by the time he returned, and by then it was too late to stave off the eventual 29-31 loss. If there is a straw to grasp from the wreckage, it’s that Kiwi boss Clayton McMillan owes nothing to the current squad half a season into his contracted three-year tenure. He should now be given the green light to mercilessly root out the deadwood on the roster and make this his team for season two, not an XV he inherited.
Scott Robertson: Well, that accelerated quickly. The breakdancing dude, appointed to make the All Blacks hip again after a period of dullness under Ian Foster, was unceremoniously cast adrift in the surf by New Zealand Rugby following an internal end-of-year review that decided his time was up, rather than find a conciliatory way to see his contract through to the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia.
10 wins in 13 matches in 2025 weren’t enough for him to avoid scathing criticism from some players, and the loss of another assistant coach wasn’t a good look either. It meant an incredible fall from grace for the coach, and his sudden demise was reported around the world beyond the rugby world, so big was the news of the 51-year-old’s sacking.
The appointment of his replacement won’t be a hurried decision – it will be July 4 when the All Blacks open their Nations Championship at home to France in Christchurch – but it will be a process that will keep rugby in the sports headlines around the globe. That’s about the only upside to take from this Robertson mess.
All Blacks job: Two fan favourites emerge after Scott Robertson’s sacking
La Rochelle: How odd that at the same time Robertson has gotten kicked out from the All Blacks, his old Crusaders assistant Ronan O’Gara is experiencing a horrible time of it in France. La Rochelle certainly aren’t the consistent force they were when winning back-to-back Champions Cup finals against Leinster and competing for Top 14 titles, but they still have powerful performances in them, judging by how they came within the final kick of winning at Leinster last weekend.
The expectation was that they would rebound from that deflation and pick off Harlequins on Sunday to reach the Round of 16, but they again got punished for sloppiness. They were troublingly set to get beaten, trailing Quins 24-17 at home, but the losing bonus point would still have been enough for them to progress to the Round of 16.
Instead, their game management again left much to be desired, and a Quins penalty extended the margin of defeat to 10 points, eliminating La Rochelle and leaving O’Gara with a “rage in my head”. Could it be that O’Gara, contracted at the club until 2027, doesn’t have what it takes to transition his team after the Cup-winning high of 2022 and 2023? It’s an intriguing situation to keep a sharp eye on.
‘Rage in my head’ Ronan O’Gara plays blame game after ‘unacceptable’ La Rochelle elimination
Edinburgh: Funny how the giddy success story that is Glasgow this season is counter-balanced in Scotland by the goings-on at rival club Edinburgh. Sean Everitt’s side qualifying for the Champions Cup Round of 16 is nothing to be sniffed at. Just ask the likes of eliminated former champions Munster and La Rochelle.
However, last week’s confirmation that the South African has had his contract extended by two years through to 2028 wasn’t universally popular news, and his detractors were given plenty more rocks to throw by the embarrassing way Edinburgh were duffed 63-10 at Bath on Friday night. There are acceptable ways to lose a match, but this certainly wasn’t one of them, and it only heaped criticism on the Scottish Rugby Union that they allegedly aren’t ambitious enough (or too tightfisted with the cash) to go and recruit a better calibre coach.
Yes, reaching the knockout stage in the Champions Cup is certainly a healthier position for Edinburgh to be in after several years slumming it in the Challenge Cup, but the reality is that they got lucky qualifying last June with a final-day seventh-place finish in the United Rugby Championship and their league form since then is still immensely frustrating with just three wins in eight so far.
Sale: Hands up, we love how eloquent and forthcoming Alex Sanderson is in his media dealings. He was always a shaft of light as a Saracens assistant, speaking candidly at a club that generally doesn’t volunteer much insight, and he has continued in that expressive way ever since taking charge at Sale.
However, even Sanderson’s trademark articulateness surely can’t talk the Sharks out of the dereliction of duty that was their second-half collapse at Toulouse. So humiliating was the bruising level of their 77-7, 11 tries to one pummelling that it dubiously broke the record of their previous worst loss – the 58-8 English league defeat inflicted by Wasps in 2000.
Sale will allude to the fact that they had already qualified for the Round of 16 as a valid reason for making nine changes from the previous week and giving several youngsters exposure in the tournament. After all, they have an important league game at home to Northampton next Saturday to plan for. However, ‘losing’ the second half 49-7 in Toulouse was inexcusable for a club that bigs itself up as being one of England’s best.
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