Kicking off an unusual and unpredictable European Champions Cup
The European Champions Cup, still known to many of us as the Heineken, kicks off in dark December this weekend and should finish on a spring or early summer evening in May.
The format this year is the same as that devised in response to Covid last season, and doubtless still leaves many of us confused. Instead of the familiar, and fairly easily understood structure – four pools each with six clubs and three home and away fixtures with the top two in each pool going on to the quarter-final knockout stage – we have a bit of a dog’s dinner.
The twenty-four clubs are now divided into two pools of 12. Within each pool, clubs will play four matches home and away. Match points are as usual: 4 for a win, 2 for a draw, with a bonus point for scoring 4 tries or for losing by 7 points or fewer. After the four rounds of fixtures, the eight highest-scoring teams in each pool will advance to a last 16 home-and-away knockout stage in, blessedly, April. It all sounds less predictable than the old schedule (which may not be a bad thing), but, with only four games rather than six before the knock-out stage, making a good start is even more important than it has previously been. Back then it was possible – just possible anyway – to lose your first two matches and then recover to reach the quarter-final – that is, if you had collected some bonus points in victories and/or defeats. This looks very unlikely now.
Covid adds another complication, especially on account of the new omicron strain. The eligible clubs are, of course, drawn from the three European leagues: the English Premiership, the French Top14, and the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Italian Pro14. But this last league now also includes South African provinces and has indeed been renamed the United Rugby Championship (URC). Patrick Madden, rugby correspondent of the Irish Times, has said that the URC seemed a “daft premise in the midst of a pandemic”. I agree with him and he has already been proved right. Scarlets have had to concede their match against Bristol with all their matchday squad and more in quarantine in Ulster after returning from South Africa. Munster have had to register a raft of new players, many under the age of 21, because their first-team squad is, at the moment of writing, still stranded in South Africa. It’s a crazy situation, but then we live in a crazy time. Be that as it may, I approve of sport’s embrace of the old theatrical slogan – “The Show Must Go On.”
So indeed it will, somehow or other. Last year’s final, played at Twickenham, was an all-French affair, Toulouse, who also won the Top14, beating La Rochelle. Nobody will be surprised if Toulouse, with Antoine Dupont and Romain Ntamack at half-back, are there or thereabouts again.
What are the prospects for the English clubs? Saracens, the most recent English winners, are missing, relegated to the consolation Challenge Cup on account of the club’s financial misdemeanours. Harlequins, last season’s Premiership champions, must have a chance. However, they have little recent experience of success in the Heineken, and the received wisdom is that clubs usually need to have come close to the title once or twice if they are to win it. Leicester Tigers, currently at the top of the Premiership table, are in the same boat; their European glory days are a somewhat distant memory. The bookies have both Leicester and Harlequins at 25/1 against, tempting odds for those who go by optimism rather than judgement.
Exeter Chiefs have been gaining European experience for two or three years now. They haven’t been at their best in the Premiership this season, not yet that is, though beating Saracens the other day will have given them a boost. Not bad value at 9/1. Still, I assume that these three English clubs will all reach the knock-out stage, as will Bristol who start with a 28-0 (5 points) bonus on account of Scarlets’ unfortunate inability to fulfil their first fixture. Rotten luck for them, nice for Pat Lam’s Bristol, even though coach and players would undoubtedly have preferred to win the 5 points on the field, and – I guess – would have done so. Then there are Wasps and Northampton Saints, both rank outsiders
Cardiff are the only Welsh club to have won the Cup, and that was so long ago to be only a misty memory now, and therefore irrelevant. Neither of the two Scottish clubs, Glasgow and Edinburgh, has ever reached the final. Glasgow, this year’s representatives, have a better recent Heineken record than Edinburgh, though Edinburgh may currently be the better team and certainly have more chance in the Challenge Cup than Glasgow in the Champions Cup.
Glasgow, in recent good European years, were unfortunate to come up against Saracens in two quarter-finals, and so goodbye. Their luck is no better this time. They find themselves meeting Exeter Chiefs, who have done for them in the past, and La Rochelle in these preliminary rounds. Not much joy there, even though they won away to La Rochelle a couple of years ago. Sadly they had already carelessly lost to them at home.
Leinster, having recently supplied twelve of the Ireland XV, are second-favourites behind Toulouse, and seem to have a better chance than anyone else of preventing the Cup from remaining in France. That will be tough, given that the final will be played in Marseille’s Stade Velodrome, an emotional cauldron and a terrific place to watch rugby.
Still, Leinster is now a formidable club, with a splendid academy that seems to produce an endless supply of players ready for the big-time. They will field a couple of New Zealanders but are nevertheless closer to being a home-grown team than any other club in the tournament. As for the other Irish clubs, Ulster actually inflicted the only defeat Leinster have suffered this year, but their first match is a hard one, away to Clermont-Auvergne. Munster’s glory days are, like Leicester’s, some way back, but they are still never easy to beat at home in Limerick. Nor, indeed, are Connacht in Galway.
Weather usually plays a big part in these December and January fixtures, being vile more often than not. It can be difficult to pick up the much needed 4-try bonus point on a cold, wet and windy day, especially in an evening match. Still, sixteen or the twenty-four team will get through to the knock-out stage in April. By then – fingers crossed – the latest Covid variant may have shot its bolt or at least be well past its worst. By The European Champions Cup final, the sun may be shining, the air mellow, and life and rugby may be fun again, Deo volente.