Smith and Ryan look to utilise home help

It used to be a fact of Heineken Cup life that come the quarter-final stage, there was a more realistic chance of an England coach being treated with basic human decency by the Rugby Football Union than of a team winning on the road. Between 1996 and 2001 only two sides – Toulouse and Brive – prevailed away from home, and both were defending champions at the time. By and large, a club armed with ground advantage were odds-on favourites to make it into the last four.

Over the last half-dozen seasons, the home draw has proved less of a godsend. Munster won famously at Stade Français in 2002 and performed quite magnificently to knock out Leicester at Welford Road a year later; Perpignan blazed a trail of their own by winning in Llanelli, also in 2003. This is worth mentioning because both Munster and Perpignan must do something similar today.

Their respective games, against Gloucester at Kingsholm and London Irish at the Madejski Stadium, are just about the pick of a high-quality quartet of fixtures, although tomorrow's ties – Saracens v Ospreys at Vicarage Road and the meeting between Toulouse and Cardiff Blues in the Midi-Pyrenees – are not exactly low on interest. Can Gloucester douse the Munster fires sufficiently to bring their brilliant young backs into play? Can Irish withstand the intense physical examination they expect from the Catalans, whose reputation for prisoner-taking mirrors that of Genghis Khan?

The Munster team pretty much picked itself, although Declan Kidney's decision to drop the long-serving Peter Stringer and start with Tomas O'Leary at scrum-half raised an eyebrow or two. The Gloucester selection was far more complex, but the head coach, Dean Ryan, has struck an intriguing balance up front by mixing some of his most mobile tight forwards – Andy Titterrell, Marco Bortolami, Alex Brown – with a thoroughly canine back-row unit featuring Peter Buxton, Andy Hazell and Luke Narraway.

Those who have the men from Limerick down as favourites suspect that the number of Irishmen in the capacity 16,500 crowd will make Kingsholm a less forbidding venue than it might otherwise have been. They have a point: the match could have been played in a telephone box and Munster supporters would still have contrived to lay their hands on a dozen tickets. But Gloucester's season is at the tipping point: defeat tonight would wreck their confidence ahead of the Guinness Premiership run-in as well as turf them out of Europe. It is, to say the very least, a must-win moment.

Rather like Gloucester, who have been out-muscled too often for Ryan's liking in recent weeks, London Irish face a test of sinew as well as nerve. Their two pool matches with Perpignan were harsh affairs and they have not forgiven Perry Freshwater, the England World Cup prop who has led the visitors this season, for the damage he caused to Kieran Roche's cheekbone and eye-socket in December. They are also aware their rivals have won some tough encounters in the French championship recently, beating Stade Français in Paris and Bourgoin in the Lyonnais. Indeed, they have not lost anywhere since the middle of February, when they went to Toulouse and caught them on a good day.

"We're not taking this personally," said Brian Smith, the London Irish director of rugby. "We don't think we're the only team they try to rough up. We're a side looking to play rugby, and we're confident in what we can achieve if we're allowed to do it, but we also have 22 blokes who are very courageous, know how to look after themselves and stick together. We're not the sorts to incite something, but we won't walk away if it happens."

The Ospreys, who swamped Saracens in the EDF Cup semi-final at the Millennium Stadium a fortnight ago and have been heavily backed to win a first European title ever since, lost the Scotland wing Nikki Walker to injury yesterday. All the same, they have the look of title challengers. No fewer than 10 of their starting line-up can consider themselves first-choicers for the Six Nations champions, Wales – had Mike Phillips, that bull of a scrum-half, been fit, the figure would have risen to 11 – and it is difficult to see how a Saracens side with so few current Test players can bridge the chasm in class.

Something similar goes for the Blues, who must find a way of dealing with some seriously wonderful Tou-louse personnel: Cédric Heymans, Vincent Clerc, Yannick Jauzion, Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, Yannick Nyanga, Thierry Dusautoir. But Welsh rugby is feeling good and when they have all their ducks in a row the Blues can play a bit. A Heineken Cup classic in the making? Here's hoping.