Sale keep the faith but La Rochelle make six changes for Saturday's quarter-final

Why are you avoiding that question?

Is it because you insisted you weren't implying a 1 to 1 correspondence between the proportion of teams from each league that make the semis, and the proportion of teams from each league that should qualify for the competition, when you clearly were?

I think so too, but as I've said, I'm in favour of a structure that needs as little change as possible in the future. And at some point, a 'chance' to make it by winning challenge cup etc, is not going to cut it. I'm talking lasting another 20 years until maybe Europe is fully on board and lots of nations can handle one or two elite pro teams, then I'd be happy with another revamp.

But how many changes has CC/EPCR gone through? I'm just worried its a reason for it's current decline (not having followed it ever I wouldn't know of course).

"Why it wouldn't be half French teams? If we use the last 5 years history it will. Unless you are thinking of a max number per domestic league. What would that number be then? 6? 7?"

Jesus Christ. You insisted you weren't using maths like that.

Maybe you need to look up how the UEFA system actually works.

"I was using the past result in the semis to make a quick estimate on what the ranking"

If the top14 ranked more highly than the Prem and the URC then that wouldn't entail that HALF the teams should be French.

The hope would also be that if CC can raise it's prestige, in part through a better structure that were trying to find, and in leagues better welfare and season lengths (Englands current point of difference and advantage/reason for impirovement?), then one might hope that allows France the avenue to fall in line as well.

You suggest they'd just dump it because they already play the majority of opposition in their own league, so CC fixtures are devalued. But if they can get that to flip and those same FvF fixtures suddenly are more important than the league ones, by this I mean both teams send their top sides to each away fixture, then suddenly those league games become of less value to TV and LNR, to the point were they could drop their own double round robin and increase player welfare.

How else did you come to the conclusion that half of the champions cup teams would be french if a UEFA style points system was adopted?