Gerry Thornley: Champions Cup needs fast start as format underwhelms

If it ain’t broke, why the hell fix it? When will tournament organisers learn that the more you tamper with a competition’s format, the more your risk damaging the product?

For 15 years from 1999-2000, and with each passing season under the ERC, the Champions Cup maintained the same format. Six groups of four, played off on a round robin format, leading to quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final. Two rounds in October, two in December and two in January. Simple and easy for supporters to follow, with back-to-back December rounds adding a touch of novelty.

It invariably led to a multi-layered final weekend of round six matches in January. Maybe it wasn’t entirely meritocratic, but generally the best teams were ultimately crowned champions.

Then along came the bully boys from the PRL and LNR to have ERC disbanded and replaced by the Swiss-based EPCR. It’s debatable whether culling the Champions Cup by four to 20 teams in 2015-16, and making it five groups of four teams, improved the quality as much as it was claimed would be the case. But at least that stayed in place for five seasons.

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The new, pandemic-induced format, containing two groups of 12 in which sides play two opponents home and away, with eight qualifying for the last 16, is certainly not as spectator friendly.

But, of course, that Covid threat hasn't gone away.

The jury is still out too, as ultimately last season the four-game pool stages were abandoned after two rounds, during which four games had already been cancelled and 28-0 walkovers awarded. The round of last-16 was also reduced to a straight knock-out. On reflection, it really was something of a minor miracle that both the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup – competed across six countries, albeit at least on the same continent – were completed.

The four-game pool format has denied us those back-to-back rounds and made for more of a roll the dice, sprint for the last-16, where the home-and-away, two-legged ties could make for something new and interesting (or dead second legs) and at least there are no pool meetings with familiar opponents from the same leagues.

But, of course, that Covid threat hasn’t gone away. Who knows what disruptions await this season, and the ripple effects from the postponed round six and seven URC games in South Africa are still being felt, with the Scarlets game away to Bristol in grave doubt.

Maybe that is why there seems to be less unbridled anticipation for the remodelled competition. More than ever, you sense, it needs a good start.

New territory

In essence, we’re still in new territory with this new format. The pool stages having been abandoned after two rounds last season, come the round of 16 a total of seven Top 14 sides and six Premiership clubs advanced alongside just three Pro14 teams – Leinster, Munster and the Scarlets.

Of the latter, only Leinster (after their walkover against Toulon) kept the flag flying in the quarter-finals, alongside five French sides and two from England. Things weren’t much better for the Pro14 in the Challenge Cup.

There were a myriad of differing factors at play, with the Pro14 sides having been on the go continually whereas the French abandoned their 2019-20 Top 14. Yet the suspicions lurks that the four-game sprint to the knock-out stages suits the French mentality more than the more nuanced six-game, round robin groups, where a losing or attacking bonus point could make all the difference.

Who’s to say, but two wins and a couple of bonus points, ie 10 points, could henceforth be the threshold for reaching the knock-out stages.

The French clubs, and indeed their English counterparts, also look better primed going into this weekend’s opening round of matches. Unlike the URC, both the Top 14 and Premiership have been ticking over during the November window. The French clubs have each played a dozen matches, and the English nine or 10, whereas the URC teams have at most played seven, and in the case of Munster and others of course, a mere five – and none for seven weeks.

While they thrive in adversity and will roll up their sleeves and represent those red jerseys in Europe with their customary pride, Munster will be nowhere near their strongest, while Cardiff will also be weakened for the visit of the champions Toulouse, who themselves will be smarting from last Saturday’s defeat by Bordeaux-Begles.

The latter, semi-finalists last season, have a similar all-court game for all conditions and like Romain Ntamack at Toulouse, a genius at outhalf in Mathieu Jalibert. Given these two leading French sides, along with Premiership champions Harlequins and leaders Leicester, are in Pool B, that looks the more competitive half of the draw.

La Rochelle were beaten 25-20 after leading Stade Francais, Connacht’s opening opponents, by 20-6 last Sunday while Racing led Bordeaux 14-6 at half-time in La Defense Arena two weeks ago only to lose 37-14. Both have lost six out of 12 games, but their draws are favourable.

Clermont, Ulster’s initial opposing at the rocking Stade Michelin, are also in that 6-0-6 bracket, but they look like a club in transition, with Morgan Parra in his last season and Camille Lopez looking to make it his as well, a year before his contract ends. By contrast, Montpellier, Leinster’s opponents on Friday week, are the form side in the Top 14 with five successive wins.

But Leinster remain, undoubtedly, the standout URC contenders. If not quite their Holy Grail, the more Leinster have dominated what has now become the URC, it seems the more their seasons are judged by how they fare in the Heineken Champions Cup.

Since having their fourth star stitched on their blue jerseys after the 2018 triumph in that double-winning campaign, Leinster have added another three Pro14 titles but in Europe have come up short in a final, a quarter-final (both against Saracens) and a semi-final against La Rochelle. Compounding their pain, Toulouse then beat La Rochelle in the final to become the first club to claim a fifth Euro star.

Starting out, Leinster will also know that every point counts and to that end will aim for nothing less than top place in Pool A. Despite their relatively rustiness, and a couple of relative blips this season, that’s well within their capabilities.

gthornley@irishtimes.com