Former Ireland international Jamie Heaslip has picked his Champions Cup team of the Pool stages alongside former England prop David Flatman.
The Champions Cup Pool stages will draw to a close this weekend with Leinster, Munster and Ulster all still alive heading into the final round.
The knockout stage could see all three Irish provinces represented, which would mark a stark contrast to where the teams where three seasons ago when no Irish team advanced to the final eight.
Given that Leinster and Munster both sit atop of their respective pools, there was always going to be a significant Irish contingent in any team of the Pool stages with both pundits selecting 10 of Joe Schmidt’s players in their combined team.
Ulster winger Jacob Stockdale is a no brainer with five tries through five Pool games and former England flier Ugo Monye said that the Wallace high school graduate has ascended to the best winger in the world in his opinion.
“Speaking of another young player for whom the game looks almost too easy, at times, is Jacob Stockdale,” Monye said on the BBC’s Rugby Union Weekly.
“Honestly, the bigger the stage the better he plays. He’s just a phenomrnal player. For me, he’s just the best winger in the world.”
“He’s so incredibly difficult to tackle,” Monye added, “and I don’t mean that in a Jonah Lomu sense. He was quite obvious in what he brought – he was a big, big man that was hard to stop. Stockdale is a big, big man that’s hard to stop but I think there is a genuine fear factor about him now… and what that does is put an element of doubt into defenders…
“He did that chip and chase [score] against New Zealand and there was nothing lucky about it. That was pure skill, identification of space and execution. At the moment, everything he’s doing is sheer quality… you get guys that score tries and contribute to matches, but he’s winning matches [with his tries] and that’s why, I think, he is the best player in the world.”
