A distinct hint of deja vu swirls around this weekend’s European Champions Cup quarter-finals. A decade ago, as now, three of the four ties in the last eight were hosted by French clubs, while Leinster entertained English opposition in Dublin. Of those French sides, all reached the semi-finals and two of them – Toulouse and Stade Français – contested the final.
Things may or may not unfold similarly this time but it is a very different story if you dig a little deeper into the Euro pyramid. Ten years ago there were five Top 14 sides in the European Challenge Cup last eight; now there are none. As far as the French are concerned, European club rugby’s second-tier competition is no longer worth the hassle.
They are not alone. What should be the Uefa Cup or Europa League of rugby feels more akin to the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy. This is not to denigrate those clubs – four Premiership, four Pro12 – who have made the last eight but merely an objective summary of the tournament’s current relevance. A rapt global audience, let’s face it, is not counting down the hours until the Newport Gwent Dragons and the Cardiff Blues – ninth and 10th respectively in the Pro12 – get it on this Saturday lunchtime.
For all sorts of reasons, the Challenge Cup is presently in danger of losing its raison d’être. The winner is not guaranteed to qualify for the Challenge Cup next season, having to make do instead with a play-off spot.
The principle of three second-placed pool sides dropping down from the elite competition for the knockout phase has also been quietly dropped since the main tournament was reduced from 24 teams to 20.
Next season will be a different story – but only because it is a World Cup year. The Challenge Cup winners will qualify for the following season’s Champions Cup but in 2017-18 there will be a permanent switch back to the play-off system. Even if, say, Gloucester win this season’s Challenge Cup to outflank the seventh-placed Premiership finisher, they will only play in the elite event should they beat the seventh-placed Pro12 side – probably Connacht, Edinburgh or the Scarlets – followed by the seventh-placed Top 14 side – potentially Montpellier, Oyonnax or Grenoble – on 30 May. By then everyone will be on their knees.
It all threatens to spawn a competition that is a waste of everyone’s time and effort. The whole driving force behind the new European set-up was to reward merit. Surely it says more about a team’s qualities if they battle their way through a series of sudden-death matches to win a worthwhile trophy, rather than simply rewarding them for mid-table mediocrity. If there has to be a play-off for 20th place, perhaps it should be between the seventh-placed Pro12 team and the top-ranked Italian club, if the latter has finished outside the top six. That would retain the principle of Italian involvement in the Champions’ Cup – but only absolutely guarantee a place if they earn it on the field.
Automatic Champions’ Cup qualification would similarly reinvigorate the meandering Challenge Cup and make it something worth cherishing again.
These should be boom times for European club rugby – the 84,068 crowd at Wembley on Saturday and the 5% rise in Premiership attendance figures this season, despite London Welsh’s travails, suggest interest is growing – yet directors of rugby of mid-table squads across Europe are all forced to prioritise the domestic front.
Spectators, inevitably, tend to follow suit but how can it be seen as progress if the first Challenge Cup of the remodelled European era is mostly viewed as an afterthought? There was also only one French side – Stade Français – in last year’s quarter-finals but the Bath versus Northampton final in Cardiff had a real pedigree feel to it. So did Leinster versus Stade Français the previous year. In 2004-05 the Sale side that lifted the trophy included such noted internationals as Jason Robinson, Ben Foden, Charlie Hodgson, Mark Cueto, Andrew Sheridan, Bryan Redpath and Sébastien Chabal. When Cardiff beat Toulon in 2010 it was a momentous occasion, too. A seriously competitive Challenge Cup – incorporating a worthwhile prize for the champions – should not be beyond the wit of European rugby’s administrators.
World Cup wobble
In the great scheme of things, the abrupt resignation of Debbie Jevans as chief executive of the 2015 Rugby World Cup organising committee will not change a huge amount. Her replacement, the new managing director Stephen Brown, is a safe pair of financial hands and the key logistical planning has all been done. Behind the scenes at Twickenham, however, there have clearly been tensions, with suggestions that some within the Rugby Football Union felt Jevans was not paying them sufficient heed. Given she helped organise a spectacularly good London Olympics in 2012, you might think they would have given her the benefit of the doubt. If whispers about a lack of backroom cooperation are true, it will not do much for the RFU’s image abroad.
One to watch
The final weekend of the Six Nations remains a hard act to follow but this week’s European Champions Cup quarter-finals offer some fascinating match-ups. It will be particularly interesting to see what happens when Bath return to the same Dublin field where England came a cropper against Ireland in the championship. If it is a dry day, Bath’s backline will hope to pose rather more problems than that of their national team.
