At first glance there is something pleasingly balanced about the make-up of this season’s Champions Cup.
Twenty-four sides involved – eight each from the Top 14, Premiership and URC. That’s fair then, right? As it should be? A best-of-the-best tournament run on gloriously meritocratic lines?
On the surface, yes, but not in reality. There’s a problem with this season’s Champions Cup. There are too many English clubs.
For eight out of the 10 to be herded into Europe’s blue-riband club competition makes a nonsense of the VIP queue.
It is almost harder not to qualify for the English team.
It would better reflect the current balance of power in the game if one Premiership club was chopped for an extra French club to be brought in.
It would also improve the spread of the tournament if another Premiership side was replaced by a Welsh region.
The big picture is that the more diversity there is, the better it is for the competition.
It just doesn’t feel right with no Welsh representation for the first time this season. The Welsh game may be at a low ebb at the moment but there is an ingredient missing from the pot.
The Champions Cup is an international competition so its make-up should be as international as possible.
“It is sad because you want representation,” said Ospreys head coach Toby Booth. “The big picture is that the more diversity there is, the better it is for the competition. The game is struggling a little bit and having a Welsh side in there would add to it.
“It aids the credibility and visibility of Welsh rugby to be in there which is definitely what is needed because everyone is finding a reason not to support it, rather than a reason to support it, at the moment and that’s something we all have a responsibility to try to change.
“We need to grow the game at the very top level and this is a competition that helps people do that.”
Ospreys would have been involved this season, having finished eighth in the URC last term, but they were elbowed out by a lower-placed side from the same league – South Africa’s Sharks – winning the European Challenge Cup.
While it is right that the carrot of Champions Cup qualification is dangled for the Challenge Cup winners, a place should be reserved for a Welsh, Scottish and Italian team every season to enhance the mix. For consistency, Ireland and South Africa should be covered too, although a backstop in their cases would be purely hypothetical.
The current strength of the Premiership does not warrant 80 per cent of its clubs being involved.
The detractors would say that adding a Welsh side would dilute the quality of the Champions Cup. The Welsh regions have not exactly been lighting up the tournament of late but neither have they been a total embarrassment.
Scarlets made it to the semi-finals in 2017/18, since when Welsh regions have twice reached the knockout stages – including Ospreys as recently as 2022/23.
“Competition integrity is part of it and maybe gets magnified because of where we are with Welsh rugby,” said Booth. “We still need to be good enough to compete in that competition, but I don’t see it necessarily as us making up the numbers.
“In the year we qualified as Welsh Shield winners, we beat the French champions (Montpellier), the English champions (Leicester), we got to the knockout stages and narrowly lost out to Saracens.”
The reality is that a Welsh region is not going to win the Champions Cup any time soon but with the greatest respect to Exeter and Leicester, the two lowest-ranked of the English qualifiers, neither are they this season.
The current strength of the Premiership does not warrant 80 per cent of its clubs being involved.
You want teams to qualify on merit but not because you finish eighth in a 10-club league.
Booth, as an Englishman looking in from the outside, is able to see that clearly.
“It doesn’t make any sense. It is disproportionate for sure,” he said. “The rules have stayed the same but the context is different because there are three fewer teams in the Premiership.
“You want teams to qualify on merit but not because you finish eighth in a 10-club league.”
The current qualification quota implies that the Premiership is the equal of the Top 14, which it isn’t.
The last four winners of the Champions Cup have been French (Toulouse and La Rochelle, twice each).
One round of games is a small sample size but, unless Leinster come good, it has the scent of a French tournament again this season.
Six French clubs won last weekend and just two English clubs. Saracens had a decent win against the Bulls on their home patch and Northampton saw off a weakened Castres at Franklin’s Gardens, but that was it for the Premiership.
The English remain capable of landing a few spectacular blows – Harlequins won at Bordeaux and Exeter triumphed at Toulon last season after all – but no-one should be in any doubt where the real power lies.
The Premiership has its place – its internal competitiveness and its entertainment level is admirable – but the depth of squads are not comparable with the French clubs and Leinster.
Partly that is down to choice with a £6.4m salary cap in place. Had Bristol been free to spend Steve Lansdown’s fortune, the Bears might have been able to better combat a Leinster bench amped up to the heavens by the likes of Jordie Barrett and Caelan Doris last Sunday.
Forget the fake equality. The Champions Cup should move to nine French clubs, nine from the URC – with backstop powers for each nation – and six from the Premiership.
But for most Premiership clubs the cap is less a hindrance than a welcome mechanism to safeguard their future.
The fact is that with a TV deal in France which dwarfs that in England, the Top 14 clubs simply have more spending power.
It may not be the situation forever but for the time being, the Premiership is the support act compared to the Top 14 and Europe needs recalibrating to reflect it.
Forget the fake equality. The Champions Cup should move to nine French clubs, nine from the URC – with backstop powers for each nation – and six from the Premiership. That would break down as 64 per cent of the Top 14, 60 per cent of the Premiership and 56 per cent of the URC.
All round, that would be a much more accurate reflection of the state of play.
also never let rugby pass tv do u20 broadcast not on youtube again , with the chat it was boring as hell! i wouldnt pay for that shite!, idiots didnt even start youtube broadcast on time, please make it back on youtube not this ameteur hour cock up!
what you say is true , 16 teams expanded to 4 qualifiers from earlier challenge cup rounds, but either way you are asking teams to lose money by not playing! for some clubs this is much needed income! so how do you reward them for loss income?
It makes no difference. Toulouse will (or at least should win) the next 10 of these!
Very simple solution in my view. Trim both competitions back to 20 teams. Top half of each league goes to the Champions Cup, bottom half of each league goes to the Challenge Cup. Each competition has 4 groups of 5, you play the rest of your group once, 2 home, 2 away. Group winners, plus the next 4 best clubs regardless of group (what in America they call "Wild Cards") go to the knockout stage.
So you'd have the top 8 in the URC, top 7 in Top 14, and top 5 of the Premiership.
This really seems like a pretty obvious no brainer. There are three top flight leagues across Europe/Africa, with 40 clubs total. The numbers are all very obvious. I think the biggest reason this isn't done is because it leaves with a choice of eliminating a knockout round, or, letting so many from the pool stage through, it makes the pool stage almost meaningless.
That said, I think this still makes sense. You know players are going to be happy with one less round of fixtures. Also allows the Top 14 one less week when they have to overlap with international rugby too.
The problem with four groups of 5 is that each week one team per group would not have a game.
I think my numbers are fairer, more even. They involve some big conceptual changes though.
I tend to agree with this article, the CC can still be a prestigious tournament, like World Cups are, by stipulating each country (or continent as in WCs) has involvement. Do you need to start with so many for URC though? I don't know, but it's four pool winners probably should have spots, then the next 3 or 4 based on seeding?
So that's at least like a second Irish, South African, and maybe one of the other Scot or Italian teams that didn't finish top is still better than other sides 2nd (like Benneton). Shared among 4 English and so many French etc.
It will be interesting where England and France want to take the comp with SA's involvement, they might see it's value increased? In which case I would probably be best if it was more of a tool to balance out the seasons (get French less depending on having a huge amount of league games).
so your solution is that the premiership should get fewer teams, despite being an equal partner to the URC and top 14?
limiting the prem to 5 teams would have excluded bath, harlequins, and exeter from last years competition. Bath made the round of 16; exeter made the QF; harlequins made the SF.
on merit, the english teams deserve to be there far more than the teams finishing 6-8 in the URC and top 14 do.
It is laughable that a 10 team league has the same number of clubs qualify as a 16 team league. Absolutely the prem clubs need to be cut. Back to 16 teams 4 from the prem. 6 each from urc and top 14. 4x4 groups, QF, SF, F.
No backstops, it's absurd to cut prem teams on a meritocracy argument and then include underperforming teams just because they come from a particular country.
aren't you scottish?
last year the only scottish team in the competition played 3 english teams and lost every time. On merit the english clubs deserve to be there.
it should be 20 teams
the top 4 from the top 14, the top 4 from the URC, the top 4 from the prem, and the top 4 to have not qualified via another means from last years challenge cup and from the champions cup
that way each league would have equal rights to representation, but in periods of time where English teams are doing poorly, they would get fewer teams. by making qualification more dependent on performance in europe the previous year it would also disincentivise teams from sending weaked teams.
if this method had been used this year the teams would have been:
Toulouse
Bordeaux
Stade Francais
la Rochelle
Glasgow
Bulls
Munster
Leinster
Northampton
Bath
Sale
Saracens
Sharks
Gloucester
Benetton
Clermont
Harlequins
Exeter
Stormers
Lyon
that would give the URC 7 teams, the Top 14 6, and the Premiership 7. Perhaps that isn't a spread that people would like, but it would reward teams like Quins and Exeter for prioritising european competition. Are they better than the french teams who would be sidelined to make way for them? maybe not, but given those clubs prioritise the Top 14 anyway including them in the champions cup doesn't improve its overall standard.
Perhaps people forget that last year *6* English teams made the last 16, and 2 made the semis. Maybe none of them stood a massive chance of winning, but they improved the standard of rugby throughout the course of the competition.
Having the same number of prem teams than URC and top14 teams is unfair.
6 teams from top 14, 6 from URC and 4 from prem. Then we have 4 pools of 4. We play home and away games, top 2 qualify to quarter finals, semis, finals, champion!
Simple, beautiful!
How did you get
?
First off, I would start at the bottom, and I'd probably make the two divisions identical.
There's also whether some sort of balance or competitiveness is desired. URC teams chose a stronger provincial model, does that mean they should be given a bigger share, or less to balance out their dominance? What happened last year is irrelevant, any model or distribution needs to be taken with the future in mind, and that is going to likely mean weaker English teams (when the comp expands again). I do enjoy good wildcard system like you employed (if it had some sort of national/league reward, 6N, CC winner country etc that is).
First I think qualificatin has to be incentive based, so none of the worst teams qualify, they should be concentrating on player welfare so they can play their best team more often and not have to deal with the need for rotation and a bigger squad, and be rewarded for getting off the bottom of the ladder.
I don't know if qualification from winning the Cup needs to be a thing. I feel if thats their level (they don't qualify by being the best in their league that year), they should have the chance of winning back to back trophy's, rather than getting beat in the champions cup.
The easiest way to visualize a format, so perhaps the fairest and more accepted idea, is to split each league three ways, guys miss out, guys make it into europe, guys play for the CC. Then theres a myriad of cool wildcard tricks to balance things out further. So say theres a 6/5/4 split, URC/Top14/Prem, then instead of like challenge cup winner getting a spot replacing the 6th team for instance (using similar scenario to article), with your idea of WCs it becomes a 7/5/4 split, but you can award the WC to the 7th overall URC team, or the next best SA team. Not to go through all options but then you could also say have those 3 wildcards aval so have additional ones like 6N winner gets +1, so if scotland win it they would pretty much be guarenteed both their teams making it one was outside the top 6 etc. Or overall 8th URC seed gets it. In your scenario a competitively strong England could get 6/7/5, if their teams picked up the 6N and both Cups for example (remaining three in Challenge so none missing out on europe). An idea like this really allows for a country like England to make a small domestic league model successful, theyre guarenteed getting full europe involvement to ensure club sides can cope with a more compact league because of 4/5 weeks of europe games, given national side benefits by more cohesion amongts it's players and clubs from more concentration of talent.
There could be more wildcards of course, I just split 16 into 6 (URC/3), 14 5, and 10 4, by rounding up to find a nice number like 18 in total (wilth WCs). You get a winning formular amongst fans (so not this idea of resting players on away games, and these late night games certainly aren't it for my liking either) and LNR is happy to use it as premium content and reduce their league to compensate, they (and the others) would actually find it more appealing to have fixtures against their own sides during the eu segment. A home and away group play like in football?
Bring it down to 16 and you have a deal !
Or just have less clubs ?