Champions Cup draw: Fresh format leaves little margin for error

This season’s Champions Cup means every game is make-or-break with little margin for error

Thu, 29 Oct, 2020 - 07:00

Simon Lewis

If this was a Heineken Champions Cup pool draw that flummoxed many by its complexity, the challenge facing Munster in the coming months has been brought into sharp focus in the form of old foes Clermont Auvergne and Jerry Flannery’s Harlequins in their sights.

A new, one-off format for a competition expanded from 16 to 24 teams and condensed from five pools to two, represents plenty to tax the mind of a rugby family reared on six rounds of pulsating action and the make-or-break back-to-back games in December.

Yet this season’s Champions Cup means every game is make-or-break with little margin for error as each club plays two teams home and away in the scrap to finish in the top four of a 12-club pool.

Munster’s ranking as a Tier 2 side having reached the PRO14 semi-finals has pitted them against Tier 3 teams who on the face of it do not appear to be of lower rank. Clermont are the only French team to win a European game at Thomond Park having completed a home and away double over Anthony Foley’s side in 2014-15 and they have started the new Top14 season in form with four wins from their first five games to occupy second place, level on points with leaders Toulouse and Ronan O’Gara’s third-placed La Rochelle.

Harlequins, too, have claimed victory in Limerick, beating Munster 20-12 in a Challenge Cup semi-final, though the last meeting between the two sides saw Rob Penney’s side land a memorable 18-12 win at the Stoop in the 2013 Heineken Cup quarter-finals.

The draw certainly got Munster’s rivals excited. Clermont director of rugby Franck Azéma called the prospect of facing old foes Munster “a very big challenge” citing CJ Stander, Peter O’Mahony, Keith Earls and Conor Murray as the “backbone of the Irish national team” while Harlequins head of rugby Paul Gustard said their draw gave the Premiership’s sixth-place finishers last season, “an opportunity to play two of the most famous and successful clubs in Europe from the last 20 years in Racing 92 and Munster.

“Munster have been perennial contenders in the current form of the competition and Racing are a hugely experienced and immensely talented squad that made it to the final last season,” Gustard said, before no doubt turning to Flannery, his lineout coach, for the inside track on Quins’ future pool opponents.

The new format means teams do not face rivals from their own leagues in the pool stages with the four highest-ranked clubs from each pool qualifying for two-legged quarter-finals to be decided on aggregate scores, while those ranked five to eight in each pool move into a Round of 16 for the Challenge Cup.

PRO14 champions Leinster, in Tier 1, have drawn Tier 4 sides Montpellier and Northampton Saints as their opponents in Pool A while in Pool B alongside Munster, Tier 1 and losing PRO14 finalists Ulster, will be reunited with their European quarter-final conquerors of last season Toulouse, and Gloucester.

Connacht in Tier 4 have a tough draw for their campaign, facing a familiar foe in Pool B in former head coach Pat Lam’s Bristol Bears, who number John Muldoon as their forwards coach, as well as 2020 runners-up Racing 92.

Exeter, who lifted the trophy at Racing’s expense 11 days ago, will play Toulouse and Glasgow.

This season’s tournament kicks off with the first of four pool-stage rounds on the weekend of December 11-13 with the final set for Marseille’s Velodrome on May 22, 2021.

2020/21 HEINEKEN CHAMPIONS CUP

POOL A (with opponents in brackets)

Bordeaux-Bègles (Dragons, Northampton Saints)

Leinster Rugby (Montpellier, Northampton Saints)

Wasps (Dragons, Montpellier)

Bath Rugby (La Rochelle, Scarlets)

Edinburgh Rugby (La Rochelle, Sale Sharks)

RC Toulon (Sale Sharks, Scarlets)

La Rochelle (Bath Rugby, Edinburgh Rugby)

Sale Sharks (Edinburgh Rugby, RC Toulon)

Scarlets (Bath Rugby, RC Toulon)

Dragons (Bordeaux-Bègles, Wasps)