Champions Cup and Challenge Cup Q&A: The competition formats explained

Champions Cup format

What’s new? The tournament reverts to a multi-pool format, four groups of six teams, with each team playing either home or away against the four pool opponents who are not from their domestic league (or the URC in the case of the Irish provinces). Apparently, the draw mechanism to determine the home and away matches for each club is either based on a mathematical equation found in the Dead Sea Scrolls or an algorithm, “that takes into consideration the pool draw, domestic calendar restrictions, local calendar restrictions and broadcaster requirements”, according to the official EPCR missive.

What’s the same? The top eight clubs in each of the URC, French Top 14 and English Premiership participate. Clubs from the same league will not play against each other at the pool stage. The tournament continues to be played over eight match weekends. The pool stages take place with two rounds of fixtures in December and two in January.

Any seeding? The four Tier One clubs - La Rochelle (Champions Cup winners), Munster (URC), Toulouse (Top 14) and Saracens (English Premiership) – headed up each pool and afterwards the remaining 20 clubs were drawn or placed into the four pools with a few provisos. Only two clubs from each league were permitted in a single pool and they cannot face each other at that stage of the tournament.

Knock-out phase: The top four clubs in each pool will qualify for the Round of 16, the clubs finishing fifth drop down to the Challenge Cup and those that finish last in each of the six pools will be eliminated from European competition for that season. Teams will be ranked 1-16 having qualified for the knock-out stage of the Champions Cup and that will determine who and where they will play, potentially, in the Round of 16, quarters and semi-finals. The final will be played in the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in London.

The Counter Ruck: the rugby newsletter from The Irish Times

---

Cian Healy fully focused on pursuit of silverware as season’s climax approaches

---

English referee Matthew Carley to take charge of Leinster’s Champions Cup final

---

Richie Murphy aiming to kickstart ‘huge job’ at Ulster by beating Leinster

---

[ Deja vu for La Rochelle and Leinster as they meet for fourth time in a row in Champions Cup ]

Challenge Cup format

The Lowdown: The tournament consists of 18 clubs with eight representatives from the URC, six from the French Top 14 and two from the Premiership, plus two invited clubs, still to be determined. The clubs were drawn or allocated into three pools of six with two Top 14 clubs in each pool. Clubs from the same URC Shield (Irish, Welsh, South African, Scottish/Italian) and from the Premiership, as well as the two invitees, were kept apart during the draw.

Clubs will play four different opponents home or away with ‘same-league’ matches being kept to a minimum, and only impacting clubs from the URC. The four highest-ranked clubs from each of the pools will qualify for the knock-out stage, along with four clubs that drop down from the Champions Cup. The final will be played at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium.