Gifted James Lowe can light up Champions Cup final

It’s not often that you’d find yourself sympathising with sports bodies. Vital and all as they may be, they operate on a calculated basis and are far removed from the blood and thunder of the pitch. Like that equally put-upon sector of sporting society, the referees, we tend to notice the ‘blazers’ only on those occasions when things go wrong.

European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) are no outliers in that sense. The lack of warmth in this sense has been a direct result of the political machinations that condemned the old ERC and Heineken Cup to history by the French and English power brokers. That and the unfounded promises of a more gilded future for the continental competitions.