The Heineken Rugby Show - The Semi Final Edition

The Heineken Rugby Show has been a firm fixture in the Out On The Full diary throughout the competition and I'm hope that a few of you may have read about it here or have caught an episode on YouTube however for those of you that are completely new to the show allow me to provide you with a short introduction to The Heineken Rugby Show. 

The concept is simple, in front of a live audience three very well known rugby experts, Will Carling, Scott Quinnell and Matt Dawson, enjoy a few beverages of the Heineken variety in the Cabbage Patch Pub in Twickenham and discuss anything and everything to do with the Heineken Cup. The key individuals and moments in all of the European matches are discussed and often the conversation often extends well beyond the field of play!! On number of occasions this year audience members were delighted by tour stories that haven't previously been shared with such a large audience before and the philosophy of 'what is said at the Heineken Rugby Show stays at the Heineken Rugby Show' was definitely employed! 

This week it was time for the fifth Heineken Rugby Show, as always Will, Matt and Scott were on fine form and they certainly had a lot of action to talk about given the two monstrous Semi Final matches that took place. Naturally a lot of the discussion was about Saracens' astounding performance against Clermont and trying to dissect exactly what went on inside Twickenham Stadium. There were a number of other points on the agenda including a debate about the England futures of two key men; Chris Ashton and Stefan Armitage, needless to say opinion was split on both. 

The quote of the night was provided by Mr Quinnell who described a certain Mathieu Bastareaud as a 'mini-van' given his size and the rather large VW symbol on his chest, however even the mighty 6ft 4in, 18 stone man that is Scott Quinnell didn't fancy repeating this to his face in a couple of weeks time! During the night Matt flicked through his phone book and found another celebrity friend to call in order to get their take on the Heineken Cup, in previous shows he called Tuffers (Phil Tuffnell), Ben Cohen and Justin Rose and the Semi Final Celebrity of choice was equally high profile! 

For those of you that do follow Will on Twitter (@willcarling) you will know that midway through the Saracens versus Clermont match he bet his house on Clermont winning and suffice it to say that he received a huge amount of stick for this throughout the evening and I don't believe will be able to live that one down for a long time!!! 

As always it was a fantastic night in great company, the Cabbage Patch was full of extremely knowledge and fun rugby supporters and as always Heineken were superb hosts. The full show will be on YouTube very shortly and watch out for a Heineken Rugby Show selfie that will be doing the rounds on Twitter... you'll be pleased to know that for once I refrained from spoiling the picture so feel free to Retweet it at will!!

After 306 tries and 3,129 points scored there is just one more game left in the 2013/14 Heineken Cup and it is a huge one. Scott, Will and Matt are just as excited as we are to watch two powerhouses do battle in the beautiful surroundings Millennium Stadium in Cardiff in just a few weeks time... what a fitting finish it will be to what has been an outstanding competition. 

Here is the full show... Happy Viewing!!  

Images @TomCarling