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People should be careful what they wish for - Andy Goode
By Andy Goode
People have very short memories when it comes to all the complaints about the format of the Heineken Champions Cup this week and we need to be careful what we wish for.
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There’s never going to be a perfect solution and, of course, we’re going to see a few one-sided matches but there are far fewer dead rubbers under the current system than there was when I was a player.
I remember losing the opening couple of matches in the pool stage with Wasps back in 2014/15 and still making it through to the knockout stages and that was completely unprecedented, everyone else used to give up if they lost the first two games.
Nowadays, if a team loses again this weekend after going down last week, it’s far from all over and we’re likely to see them still fighting hard to qualify come January. As many as five teams made it through to the Round of 16 having won just one game last season.
We used to see it all the time where teams, especially French sides, would field weakened teams or send the academy away from home after Christmas because their hopes of qualification had gone but everyone will still have something to play for in Rounds 3 and 4 this season.
It’s natural that people will look at the team selected by Gloucester for their trip to Leinster and ask questions but that says far more about the respective resources of the two clubs and the differences between the English and Irish system than it does the format of the competition.
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The Cherry and Whites have a tough trip to Premiership champions Leicester to look forward to on Christmas Eve and coaches being strategic in terms of their team selection is nothing new, it’s their prerogative to do that.
We saw Montpellier send a second string side to Dublin to face Leinster in Round 3 last season and they were hammered 89-7 but they still made it through to the Round of 16 and ended up beating Harlequins over two legs.
It’d obviously be great if every team could pick their best starting XV in every single game but that’s fanciful given the amount of rugby we play in the northern hemisphere and player welfare has to be the primary concern so rotation has to happen somewhere.
I think the pool stage, although shorter, is arguably more exciting under the current system than it was before but it also builds to a crescendo and then you end up with a longer and hopefully even more thrilling knockout stage which is exactly what you want.
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A lot of people have said that it’s too complicated as well and I understand that having two pools of 12 as opposed to five pools of four takes a bit of getting used to but as soon as you get you head around the fact that you’ve just got two opponents home and away and you need to finish in the top eight, it couldn’t be simpler really.
Unless we have an NFL style system in rugby throughout Europe, which I don’t think anyone is suggesting, there are always going to be the haves and the have-nots and the sport is always going to be somewhat cyclical.
English sides won the Heineken Champions Cup four times in five seasons between 2015 and 2020 and now they obviously look to be struggling to compete a bit more but most can still beat anyone on their day.
There are a few French sides that look particularly good given the strength of the game over there but, outside of them, it’s really only Leinster you’d say are a way ahead of the Premiership clubs.
Again, people have short memories and you don’t have to go back all that far to find the time that they were living in Munster’s shadow and if Saracens in particular come up against the men from Dublin in a one-off game, there’s every chance they could beat them.
The current model is also about as fair as you can get because of the seeding system that’s in place. So, if you finished higher up in the Premiership table last season, you’re playing against teams that ended up lower down in the Top 14 and URC tables.
I know it’s the way of the world at the moment to complain about the way things are, and perhaps also human nature to hark back to the good old days, but we really should be careful what we wish for.
The old Heineken Champions Cup format had just as many flaws, if not more, as this one and the focus should be on how this model allows for the competition to gather pace and end in an elongated knockout stage rather than the odd mismatch we might see now.
Today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper and we’ll have to wait and see what January brings but I firmly believe it’ll be another exciting climax to the pool stage and this debate about the competition’s format will be forgotten, for another year at least.
