Gerry Thornley: poor outlook for provinces in Champions Cup well-founded

The opening skirmishes do not exactly portray the Guinness Pro12 in a particularly favourable light. Six defeats out of six games against Top 14 and Premiership sides over the weekend leaves the Ospreys with the only win in nine attempts against the Anglo-French teams.

As a result, the Welsh region are the only non-English team leading one of the five groups, after the first Premiership clean sweep since 2008. No apparent World Cup hangovers there then.

Then again, no teams quite supplied their countries with players at the World Cup to the extent of Leinster – 17 for the duration of the tournament, including Zane Kirchner, and supplemented by Isaac Boss, Mike McCarthy and Rhys Ruddock – and Glasgow, who had 16 in Vern Cotter's original squad.

It is perhaps therefore no coincidence that even though his methods are more established than those of Leo Cullen at Leinster, Gregor Townsend has also felt the after-effects of this drain on his resources judging by their 26-15 defeat at home to Northampton, which was every bit as demoralising and damaging as the heavy opening home defeats Leinster and Ulster suffered to English opposition.

The odds are thus heavily stacked against all three already, with Leinster now 33/1, Ulster 14/1 and Glasgow 16/1 to win their pools, whatever about qualifying as one of the three best runner-ups. So too the Scarlets, after their heavy defeat at home to Racing Metro and, needless to say, Treviso. Indeed, the Scarlets, Treviso and Leinster are the only teams to have lost two matches out of two.

Albeit having only played Treviso at home, Munster look like Ireland's only credible hope of maintaining interest in the Champions Cup beyond January, but they too will have to buck the Irish trend of losing at home to Premiership teams when they host Leicester in three weeks' time.

Otherwise Leicester will open up a gap of eight points or so before the return meeting in Welford Road a week later.

Alas, therefore, the gloomy prognosis for the Irish provinces already looks well -founded. Of course, Ulster and Leinster are not mathematically out of Europe yet. Realistically, however, they will both probably need exceptional wins – such as doubles over Toulouse and Toulon – to escape from their pools, after costly defeats at home to English teams.

That possibly reads more daunting that it actually is. Neither of the French giants have been cutting up trees this season. Toulouse were well beaten by Saracens in what must, understandably, have been a difficult time to play a rugby match, but even so struggled at home to Oyonnax.

The prospect of a Sunday evening game in Coventry clearly didn’t enthuse the Toulon galacticos, who looked almost uninterested in losing desultorily by 32-6 at Wasps.

Stemmed tide

This was all bar two of the team that had started in the 52-8 rout of Montpellier at home two weeks ago, with Bryan Habana’s return for Lachlan Turner hardly weakening their cause, and even the outstanding French hooker Guilhem Guirado, replaced by Anthony Etrillad, could not have stemmed that tide single-handedly.

They too appear to be suffering from the World Cup, ahead of the peleton in the Top 14 in fourth place after four wins and four defeats domestically thanks to six bonus points. However, it’s worth noting that they have scored 158 points in their last three home games against La Rochelle (45-24), Oyonnax (61-3) and Montpellier.

In three weeks, they are likely to have the injured Matt Giteau, the rested Drew Mitchell and Guirado back, and possibly Ma’a Nonu, who was deregistered prior to the first two rounds but could be reregistered in time for the Leinster games.

Thus, however bleak a thought it may be for Leinster, Ulster and their supporters, the Pro12 is arguably already assuming more importance for the remainder of their seasons, starting ironically with their meeting at the RDS next Friday.

After all, it is the performances in the Pro12 last season that have contributed significantly to where all four provinces currently reside, as the draw is based exclusively on a season’s league showing, including results in play-offs.

To begin with, by just missing out on automatic qualification and then the play-offs, Connacht are in the Challenge Cup, with all the additional travel demands that has brought about.

By finishing fifth, and outside the play- offs for the first time, Leinster ended up with a third-tier ranking in the group stages, which meant drawing Toulon from the second tier as well as Bath. (Drawing Wasps from the fourth tier was just bad luck.) Being drawn in their pool of sharks was a legacy of last season’s poor league.

As a result of finishing fourth and losing away to Glasgow in the semi-finals, Ulster ended up with a second tier seeding. Even in this, they were a little fortunate, as it was a direct consequence of Munster unluckily missing out on the draw for a top tier seeding to Clermont and Bath, after they had achieved a ranking of two from the Pro12 after reaching the final. Had Munster won the final, they’d have had a top tier seeding instead of Glasgow.

It may be a distinctly flawed system, it may disregard pedigree in Europe, and it has been induced by the bullying Anglo- French club axis that wants to place primacy on their domestic leagues, but more than ever, and particularly in the context of European rugby next season, the league matters.

gthornley@irishtimes.com