So that was the two weeks that was.
It still seems utterly insane that the Champions Cup quarter-finals, which used to be one of the true standout weekends of every rugby season year upon year, were rushed off for the third campaign in a row at just a week’s notice upon the completion of the Round of 16.
Thus, Leinster went from a 55,627 crowd at their Round of 16 tie against Harlequins in Croke Park to just 22,400 for their quarter-final against Glasgow six days later at the Aviva Stadium. The top tier of the ground remained closed and empty for what was a higher stakes quarter-final. Well, that was a great look for the tournament, wasn’t it?
Will Champions Cup blowouts come back to haunt Leinster?
Remember all those Anglo-French failed promises of emulating football’s Champions League by having five main sponsors, which merely succeeded in ridding the Champions Cup of its long-established brand as the Heineken Cup?
Football’s Champions League probably could fill out their stadiums for quarter-finals at a week’s notice but Uefa would not be daft enough to risk it. Accordingly, the average attendance at the Champions Cup quarter-finals (20,695) was less than for the Round of 16 (23,139).
Credit to Bordeaux Bègles and their supporters for filling out the Stade Chaban-Delmas for the second week running. They are the best supported team in the Top 14 and no wonder with players like Damian Penaud, Louis Bielle-Biarrey et al to sprinkle their stardust.
But one would guess Munster had a big part to play in this as well and not just for the estimated 3,000 Red Army supporters who travelled to the French Atlantic coast for the second weekend running.
Munster’s win in the Stade Deflandre over Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle a week previously, coupled with the province’s rich history in the Champions Cup and support base, probably galvanised the UBB players and supporters alike.
Last week Noel McNamara, the man from Clare who is now the attack coach at UBB, spoke of how his players were fully aware of Munster’s rich impact on this tournament, and were motivated by this aspect of the tie too.
Think about those shots of both the Millennium Stadium, as it was then, and O’Connell Street in Limerick bursting at the seams with redshirted fans for the 2006 and 2008 finals against Biarritz and Toulouse, and how they filtered on to French television screens.
Maxime Lucu was aged 13 and 15 when those two finals took place, Penaud was an impressionable nine and 11, while Mathieu Jalibert was seven and nine. Bielle-Biarrey would have been too young to see them at the time, but he’s probably seen them and other Munster days in Europe over the years.
Munster haven’t reached a final since, but their contribution to this tournament goes way deeper than winning those two finals and losing those in 2000 and 2002. Winning their first knock-out tie in France since 2002 in La Rochelle and reconnecting with their Red Army possibly saved the last two weekends.
Congratulations then to the unions and the stakeholders for their lamentable failures to both justify the very Anglo-French coup against the old ERC and to find a successful formula for the competition.
Furthermore, they have botched the television coverage of the tournament as well. In advance of this season’s new deal, according to an article by Brian Moore in the Telegraph last December and other reliable sources, EPCR were offered the same money, circa €14 million to €16.25 million per annum, by TNT (formerly BT Sport) to renew their rights to the tournament in the UK and Ireland.
The tournament organisers decided they would test the waters elsewhere, but Sky no longer appear to be players in rugby and by the time the EPCR went back to TNT they had bought the rights to the Autumn Nations Series. So EPCR had to accept an offer from Premier Sports for around half the TNT offer.
Furthermore, rugby supporters in the UK now have to subscribe to TNT for the Premiership and Premier Sports for the Champions Cup, a disagreeable split of pay-per-view channels not designed to increase a tournament’s appeal, albeit it’s akin to what Irish rugby enthusiasts have endured for a few years.
Now, Irish supporters have both the URC and the Champions Cup on Premier Sport, as well as live matches in both competitions on RTÉ. However, RTÉ’s continuing Champions Cup coverage this season was a leftover from the old TV deal. So, from next season onwards there will no more Champions matches on RTÉ, which is another huge blow to this competition’s reach in the country which has most taken the Champions Cup to its heart.
The TNT/Premier split in the UK has perhaps compounded the apparent apathy toward the Champions Cup in the land of Brexit. There the ‘The Prem’, and defences with more holes than soup strainers, now reign supreme. Yet the Round of 16 didn’t exactly shine a great light on ‘The Prem’, did it?
Compounding this was the decision by Saracens to rest all their English frontliners for their tie away to Toulon, which they lost 72-42. Another lousy look.
Between them, Saracens, Harlequins and Leicester leaked 27 tries and 177 points in losses to Toulon, Leinster and Glasgow, leaving Northampton to fly the flag on their own, which they’ve done into the semi-finals again.
Amid constant bleatings about salary caps and the ‘unfair’ discrepancies in budgets when set against French and Irish clubs, it’s as if the English clubs have the hump with the Champions Cup. Given Saracens’ proven flouting of the rules and the allegations against Manchester City, that’s rich.
Besides which, it’s only a few clubs and Leinster where there’s much of a disparity in finances and quality, and having seen three Premiership clubs go to the wall and thus lose out on three domestic home matches per season you’d think they’d want to increase their home games and profile in the Champions Cup.
Ultimately, as long as the structure of the tournament remains so flawed and one of the three feeder leagues is so apathetic, the Champions Cup and the Challenge Cup will never bring more broadcasters to the table.
gerrythornley@irishtimes.com
