The world is awash with uncertainty, but not, sadly, in the case of rugby’s Champions Cup, which begins on Friday. This season’s winners will be either Toulouse or defending champions Bordeaux Bègles. Next question?
Such is the French stranglehold on the tournament – six consecutive years and counting – that it grows harder, given the existing structure and regulations, to see anyone upsetting the increasingly lopsided odds.
Bookmakers are quoting the Top 14 powerhouses at 13-5 each for the title, with Leinster, Bath, Northampton and Montpellier just about visible in the distance behind them. There might be an argument for adding the Stormers and Glasgow to the chasing peloton, but that’s about it.
A 24-team competition reduced to a handful of serious contenders before a ball is kicked? It is not the greatest of portents.
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It’s death by a thousand tweaks for the once-great Champions Cup
There are even whispers out of Gloucester suggesting a rotated Cherry and White team will be sent out against two-time champions Bordeaux on the opening night. Which really would tip a large bucket of cold water over an already-lukewarm format. When you remember that Gloucester famously won 26-17 in Bordeaux less than four years ago, a low-key first Friday night at Kingsholm would be properly anticlimactic.
The organisers will be desperately hoping otherwise. Apart from anything else they have deliberately shifted the opening weekend forward to October, chasing better weather and greater visibility than in the post-international December gloom. The snag is that a single round generates little momentum, particularly when wedged between busy domestic league weekends.
Let’s try to locate some positives. Who would not want to watch Toulouse, Bordeaux or Northampton fizzing the ball around at the moment, regardless of their opponents?
Those complaining about a surfeit of tries in the Prem and using the dismissive term “basketball” are not factoring in the skill levels required to tie defences in weekly knots. Time was when a single offload from a tight forward prompted talk of expulsion from the “front row union”. Now virtually everybody on the field can give and take a killer pass flat to the advantage line.
To some degree more teams are simply catching up with the way the best French and All Blacks sides have always sought to attack, ruthlessly targeting space and soft shoulders at pace and punishing the slightest defensive hesitation. Players out wide are bigger and better equipped to break tackles than ever before, while the laws relating to the aerial contest have created far more broken-field rugby.
Add in stricter tackle height regulations and more regular yellow cards and there is greater scope even for sides lacking a Louis Bielle-Biarrey, an Antoine Dupont or a Tommy Freeman.
There is, however, an accompanying broader issue. Rugby is built upon jeopardy; the moment it starts to become predictable, either in terms of the result or the way in which the game is played, everybody loses.
It is why the obsession with the increasing volume of tries is something of a red herring. It is the repetitive manner in which so many are being scored that is arguably the bigger turn-off.
Take the close-range rolling maul. Give away the softest of penalties on halfway and teams will invariably kick to the corner. More times than not, they duly come away with seven points. Dull and formulaic? Perhaps not in the last minute with the scores level. But if one pack is significantly stronger than the other it becomes as much fun as watching a bulldozer do battle with a blancmange.
So what to do? The time must be approaching when the defending side are awarded the throw-in when their opponents kick direct to the corner. That at least would force teams to think more and to contemplate other tactical avenues.
The proposed reduction of the Champions Cup to 16 teams should also help reduce the number of routine outcomes, albeit while concentrating even more power in the hands of a decreasing few.
This time around, either way, it will be the same old story unless teams can somehow stop Toulouse and Bordeaux at source. No one is going to outflank them – if sides opt to play them at their own game they will still probably lose 70-40 – but teams who can retain their discipline, get ahead on the scoreboard and pick off the aerial crumbs will at least be in the game.
But how many, in reality, have the squad depth to do that for long enough? There is an argument that only two of the eight English entrants – Bath at home to Montpellier and Northampton at home to Cardiff – will be favourites to win their opening matches.
Even Sale, at home to Glasgow Warriors, and Saracens, away at Connacht, may have to dig deep and the same is definitely true for Exeter in Toulouse and Bristol at Stormers, though the Bears’ Argentina lock Pedro Rubiolo is a rising force.
Complicating everyone’s task further is the amended try bonus point system which, à la Top 14, now requires teams to score three tries more than their opponents. It threatens to make it even harder for less-stacked squads to pick up priceless extra points and sneak into the last 16 by the back door.
If there is a left-field candidate it might conceivably be Pau, second behind Toulouse after six rounds of the Top 14. There or thereabouts will also be Leinster, whose long, winding crusade towards an elusive fifth star on their jerseys is starting to resemble Munster’s pursuit of their first Heineken Cup crown.
Brace yourselves, nevertheless, for a Toulouse v Bordeaux finale in Lyons on May 22nd. By then, hopefully, we will finally have some genuine jeopardy. – The Guardian
