Saints seek Heineken strength amid disarray

Tradition dictates that whenever English clubs dip a tentative toe in the stormy waters of French rugby, they kick off with their first-choice personnel all present and correct but end up with half a dozen stretcher cases and another three or four players missing in action. Northampton will buck the trend in Biarritz this afternoon by launching the defence of their Heineken Cup title in a state of serious physical distress and hoping against hope that they will grow stronger, rather than weaker, in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Tradition dictates that whenever English clubs dip a tentative toe in the stormy waters of French rugby, they kick off with their first-choice personnel all present and correct but end up with half a dozen stretcher cases and another three or four players missing in action. Northampton will buck the trend in Biarritz this afternoon by launching the defence of their Heineken Cup title in a state of serious physical distress and hoping against hope that they will grow stronger, rather than weaker, in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Well, there is nothing like blind faith to help a team through a crisis when everything else has turned to sludge. When Paul Grayson, still the most dependable big-moment goal-kicker in the English game and the man who booted the Midlanders all the way to the European championship last season, cried off yesterday after failing a fitness test on his dodgy knee, it was no more than his club-mates expected. Indeed, the stoics of Franklin's Gardens took the view that one more injury calamity was really neither here nor there.

Most of the central figures in the Saints millennial glory march have either just returned from injury - Garry Pagel, Tim Rodber, Matt Allen - or are still shuffling around in hospital slippers - Nick Beal, Craig Moir, Matt Dawson. Ali Hepher's unexpectedly swift recovery from close-season surgery at least means the holders will have a bona fide outside-half when they take on Gonzalez, Botica, Osborne and the Lievremonts at Parc des Sports d'Aguilera, but they will need more than an out-of-practice running No 10 to leave any visible mark on Serge Blanco territory.

Dawson, torn between an urgent desire to resume playing and an equally strong fear of exposing his fragile shoulder to the slings and arrows of Continental rugby before it is fully up to scratch, is only too well aware of the demanding nature of this afternoon's brouhaha with the Basques. "When we walk into grounds now, read the programme and listen to the announcements over the PA system, it's always there: "Welcome to the European champions," said the injured scrum-half. "If you don't react properly, the title can become a burden. I'm quite certain that in the early games of this season, we didn't realise how much of a lift our presence gave to opposing sides - Sale, for instance, reached a level against us last month that we didn't expect.

"The same will happen in all our European pool games, so we must forget about our recent league results and prepare ourselves for a very different challenge. The Heineken is unlike the Premiership in the sense that you don't know too much about opposing players. You have to react to what you see in front of you, which is something we did very successfully last season."

If Northampton are in by far the most parlous state of the English contingent - today they will play the rookie scrum-half Ian Vass at full-back and the 19-year-old utility back Simon Webster on the wing - both Leicester and Bath also have their worries as they contemplate the joy of physical contact with the most inflammable rugby players on the planet. The Tigers will almost certainly take on the powerhouses of Pau without their finest back, Austin Healey, while the West Countrymen are again without Mike Catt for the visit of Castres, the big-spending unknown quantities from the Toulouse region. Sensibly, however, Bath have re-thought their half-back strategy and named Jon Preston, a been-there-and-done-it All Black, at stand-off.

There is a further change in the Bath midfield. Phil de Glanville, barely seen since his valiant attempt to hold together the England threequarter line in last year's World Cup, gets a first start of the season at inside centre ahead of the more route-one Kevin Maggs. De Glanville will retire at the end of the season. "Knowing when to finish is one of the hardest things to do," he said yesterday, "but I definitely don't want to be one of those people who try to push it just a little too far and end up collecting injuries."

Meanwhile, the South African authorities confirmed Harry Viljoen, the former Stormers Super 12 coach, as Nick Mallett's replacement at the helm of the Springbok side. The announcement came as no great surprise, for Viljoen had been widely tipped for the job while his predecessor was still in the post - a clear sign that a powerful cabal within the South African Rugby Football Union had decided that Mallett was history before he was so laughably charged with bringing the game into disrepute. Viljoen, a millionaire businessman, has been out of rugby for two years and admitted yesterday that he had "a lot of catching up to do".