Gerry Thornley: Despite new format, cream has risen to the top again in Champions Cup

The revised and convoluted format comprising two pools of 12 teams each, along with the scheduling, remains a crock but, as ever, four cracking quarter-finals delivered handsomely and true to pedigree, the cream has risen to the top again.

True, Leinster, Toulouse, Exeter and La Rochelle ultimately progressed with combined winning margins of more than 100 points. Yet they were all entertaining games in their own way, with Leinster and Toulouse each pulling clear after a competitive opening hour to set up what could be a game for the ages.

Both have demonstrated their power games and their flair in reaching this point. Brilliant as some of their launch plays and nuanced attacking was against Leicester, Leinster’s scrum and maul have provided key momentum shifting moments in their last two wins.

With the emergence of Emmanuel Meafou, there’s no doubting Toulouse’s power game either and they went toe to toe with the Sharks for a compelling hour or so in the tie of the round before their ability to transition from turnovers or counter-attacks and the genius of Antoine Dupont, Roman Ntamack and Thomas Ramos filleted the tiring Sharks.

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La Rochelle overpowered the Premiership leaders Saracens and despite not playing with the same flair as Leinster or Toulouse, Ronan O’Gara’s team could again prove to have the game to win more big knock-out matches. That was their 14th win in a row in this competition, a record.

It’s also good that England retain a contender in the Champions Cup amid the waning interest across the water, and better still that it is a well-run, pro-European club like Exeter. That South African team is perhaps also no harm, in that this reflects better on European club rugby.

But in the safe presumption that Leinster and Toulouse stay true to their philosophies it will be a shock if their semi-final is anything less than compelling.

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This is Leinster’s 14th semi-final and a 15th for Toulouse, which underlines it’s one thing reaching this point. But it’s another thing to go on and win the coveted trophy, for Leinster have won six and lost seven of their previous semi-finals, while Toulouse have won seven and lost seven.

The Champions Cup does have some repetitive storylines, so viewed in that light the advent of the South African sides to the competition has been a plus, albeit with caveats.

The French, and especially Toulouse, had their misgivings before the tournament started, yet in addition to La Rochelle and Saracens meeting for the first time ever, the same applied in the Exeter-Stormers and Toulouse-Sharks games, and the novelty of the matchup certainly seemed to capture the imagination of the Pink City’s rugby-supporting public.

Despite only a week’s notice, the Stade Ernest Wallon was packed to the rafters and bouncing as a home side with its core of French internationals and an away side with its array of World Cup winning-Springboks threw the kitchen sink at each other.

Curwin Bosch was thrilling throughout as an outhalf cum counter-attacking fullback, setting up one of the tries of the season for his speedy scrumhalf Grant Williams and were it not for an earlier forward pass, the latter’s 60th minute finish would have made it a two-point game.

Even then, it was still a one-score game in the 69th minute before the Sharks wilted. The suspicion lurks that the Sharks are not an especially well-coached team, particularly defensively.

[ Toulouse have that old European hunger back and that should worry the rest ]

After all, why else is such a star-studded team languishing in eighth place in the URC?

For sure, the travelling took its toll, while the Stormers’ head coach John Dobson said his side’s first-half performance in Exeter was “the flattest I’ve ever seen us”.

His squad travelled by economy class in three different routes, only arriving in London last Wednesday. The Sharks’ squad also travelled in economy class in two sperate groups, via Frankfurt and Paris, and arrived in Toulouse last Wednesday.

Travelling back from their Challenge Cup quarter-final loss in Glasgow Riaan Louw posted a video of two of his Lions team-mates, Ruben Schoeman (1.98m) and Reinhard Nothnage (2.03m), looking about as comfortable as two sardines in a can.

It’s important to stress that whereas the EPRC organise the travelling arrangements of northern hemisphere teams to South Africa, the SARFU do so for their teams travelling to Europe, and they clearly did them no favours last week.

It would, of course, help the two tournaments no end if there was more than a week’s gap between knock-out rounds, so as to facilitate the selling of tickets as well as avoiding having to make long haul travel plans at short notice.

It would also help if the tournaments had a ninth weekend restored, so as not to deny all teams a guaranteed third home match in the pool stages. But, of course, the self-interest of the PRL and LNR, who seem to view the Champions and Challenge Cups as an inconvenience compared to the Premiership (now a deeply damaged product) and the Top 14 (okay, flourishing), to be shoehorned into the season.

Come to think of it, there has still been no pronouncement as to whether next season’s Champions Cup will again have 24 competing teams, though presumably that will be the case at this late juncture, or the exact format.

There is no Irish interest in the Challenge Cup, and yet there is, with Munster and Connacht keeping a particular keen eye on the semi-finals, when Toulon host Benetton, and the Scarlets entertain Glasgow.

Toulon, very pro-European and three-time former winners of the Champions Cup, have lost in four Challenge Cup finals and haven’t won a trophy in eight years. They’re clearly on a mission and the two Irish provinces will hope that Toulon justify favouritism in the Dublin final on Friday May 19th.

Were Benetton or the Scarlets to win the Challenge Cup, that would almost certainly mean Munster, currently fifth, or Connacht, sixth, would require a top six finish in the URC to qualify for next season’s Champions Cup.

gerry.thornmley@irishtimes.com