There have been, and will continue to be, complaints about the latest revised format of the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup, particularly as four of the eight round-of-16 ties in the former competition are reprises of matches in the pool stages. But while this surfeit of repeats is not ideal, ultimately it won’t detract that significantly from the round-of-16 when those ties loom into view after the Six Nations.
The format still is not on a par with the five round robin groups of four teams apiece, and so as long as the Premiership clubs support their French counterparts in restricting the number of “European” weekends to eight rather than nine, that will probably always be the case.
Even so, four groups of six teams, each playing four pool opponents from rival leagues, is still more spectator-friendly and easier to follow than the pandemic-induced format of the previous three seasons. Two pools of 12 teams apiece, with the top eight in each advancing, was almost incomprehensible, never mind incoherent.
The proof was in last weekend’s final round of pool matches. Granted having 48 pool matches to trim the field from 24 to 16 (with four rerouted to the Challenge Cup) doesn’t have anything like the requisite level of jeopardy which the tried and trusted formula had. That only Stade Francais went into the final weekend of pool games without a mathematical hope of reaching the Champions Cup round-of-16 underlined this.
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Much of the final weekend was about jostling for position and ensuring not only home ties in the round-of-16 but also more favourable home routes to potentially advance deeper into the tournament.
The low threshold for advancement also contributed to everybody having something to play for entering the final round of pool matches, and there were no dead rubbers. This even applied to the Challenge Cup where only Perpignan v Newcastle fell into the latter category.
In fact that old dog-eared script about the French clubs having a laissez-faire attitude to Champions Cup was shredded by Bayonne. Consigned to fifth place in Pool 3 and therefore with nothing to play for before Sunday’s finale, the tournament debutants fed off the fervour generated by their proud Basque following – and their unbeaten record at the Stade Jean Dauger in the Top 14 over the last season and a half – to blitz Exeter and deny them a home tie in the round-of-16.
All in all viewed through an Irish prism it has to be said that these pool stages constituted a noticeably disappointing campaign by the provinces. In truth this one was not that much better than the post-2015 World Cup hangover, when Leinster, Munster and Ulster all suffered pool exits, with their 18 combined matches yielding just eight wins and 10 defeats.
The four provinces played 16 matches combined in this post-World Cup pool season, winning just seven, drawing one and losing eight. Even Leinster did not quite scale the all-conquering heights of their serene and prolific jaunts through their last three pool campaigns, although in some respects maybe that is no bad thing.
They have torn up their defensive script in welcoming Jacques Nienaber aboard with open arms, and this was always bound to take some adjustment. What impact it will have on Ireland’s defence, where the bulk suppliers will now have to readapt to what was once a familiar system, will be interesting.
It could also be argued that the heavy Atlantic rain in La Rochelle for their opening game helped their defence, although a case could be made both ways given La Rochelle’s unrivalled size, physicality and power game.
Either way it remains the standout result of the entire pool stages given it was revenge away from home for a repeat of the last two finals (and preceding semi-final). It didn’t exactly undermine the attraction of repeats, and nor would another meeting in the quarter-finals at the Aviva Stadium should Leinster overcome Leicester (okay, perhaps the least attractive of the repeats) and La Rochelle win away to the Stormers.
The latter tie is another repeat, although bearing in mind some of the questionable officiating and how the Stormers won with the last play in Cape Town in round two, Ronan O’Gara’s team will be in vengeful mood on the first weekend in April.
Munster have joined Leinster in the round-of-16 but winning only one pool match – away to Toulon, which ironically, was their toughest on paper – has left them with a particularly arduous journey on the road in the knock-out stages, beginning with the other repeat from the pool stages, away to Northampton.
There’s no doubt that the contrasting failure to see out winning positions at the 40- or 50-minute mark in their other three games was in part a consequence of their high injury toll and related shortfall in experience. Even so, who would dare rule them out from turning the tables on Northampton in early April?
Connacht will feel better about salvaging a place in the Challenge Cup after a big statement win over Bristol last Friday than Ulster will about being consigned to the secondary tournament after another wildly inconsistent pool campaign, all the more so as it has led to a tougher looking draw away to Montpellier in the round-of-16.
As Bayonne’s performance against Exeter also reminded us, French clubs can be a different beast at home even if the fixture might compare unfavourably with an upcoming Top 14 game. Certainly Ulster wouldn’t have minded a sequel against one of their pool opponents in the Champions Cup knock-out stages.
It’s also worth noting that even the old tried and trusted format didn’t rule out swift reprises of pool clashes in the knock-out stages. Indeed Munster and Northampton exchanged home wins in rounds one and six of the 2009-10 pool stages before Munster won their ensuing quarter-final by 33-10.
The only way of ensuring repeats or clashes between teams from the same league don’t happen in the round-of-16 is to pencil such restrictions into the rules. But that could leave the draw looking very manufactured.
Besides, sequels can often be better than originals.
