The Irish Times' Gerry Thornley previews a crunch weekend in the battle for this season's Heineken Cup.
"Whatever about completing back-to-back wins, it’s fairly imperative to emerge with a superior head-to-head record from the December rounds. In each of the last three seasons, all six pool winners and the two best runners-up have emerged from these games with a superior head-to-head record, be it match points, try tallies or points aggregate.
"In the last seven seasons, the only slight exception to this trend was in December ’07, when London Irish shared wins with Perpignan and won the pool by two points despite an inferior head-to-head record with the French side, based on tries scored over the two games. Even then though, Perpignan qualified with them as one of the two best runners-up. Similarly, Northampton traded wins but lost out to Toulouse on match points in 2004, but still qualified behind the French team as one of the best two runners-up.
"The back-to-back rounds were introduced along with the current format of six pools each comprising of four teams in the 1999-2000 season, with Munster grasping their importance in registering consecutive wins over Colomiers en route to earning a home quarter-final as pool winners and ultimately reaching the final, where they lost to Northampton.
"By contrast, although Leinster avenged their defeat in Paris to Stade Français at Donnybrook a week later, their inferior try tally enabled Stade to progress."
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