Rugby

Matt Williams: Blind luck if the eight best teams reach Champions Cup quarters

Plenty of teams that under normal circumstances would be dumped out could qualify

Ulster have been consistently better than Toulouse across the tournament but still risk being dumped out by the French side. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho

Matt Williams's face
Matt Williams
Fri Apr 15 2022 - 15:30

The spirited displays from the Irish provincial teams in last weekend's Heineken Champions Cup round of 16 pumped a shot of dopamine straight into the rugby community's veins.

With a delicious hit of “the juice” coursing through the body of Irish rugby, a gentle amnesia descended across the land. Quality Irish performances in the round of 16 created the illusion that as long as our teams are doing okay, then the Heineken Cups round of 16 must, by logic, also be okay.

However, a small scratch under the surface tells us that what could occur this weekend is far from okay.

On Saturday night at Ravenhill, Ulster will run out with a perfect record of five excellent victories from five starts. Their opponents, Toulouse, will enter the Kingspan Stadium at the other end of the spectrum.

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Toulouse hold a solitary win in the competition over Cardiff, way back in December 2021. They then lost to Wasps 30-22 and had a Covid 0-0 registered for that return match, before Covid again hit them with 0-28 loss to Cardiff. Of course, we all witnessed Ulster's brave triumph last weekend in Toulouse.

Despite Ulster's season-long success and a string of Toulouse defeats, if the French team can conjure a win in Belfast by just a solitary converted try, which is a very real possibility for a Toulouse team brimming with world-class talent, then Ulster, with five wins, will be eliminated from the quarter-finals. Their place will be taken by a team with just two winning games.

The situation Ulster and Toulouse are facing is not unique.

Harlequins won all four of their pool games but they appear likely to have a lot of spare time come the quarter-finals.

Montpellier arguably shouldn’t be in any knockout stages based on their pool record but are all of a sudden favourites favourites to progress against Harlequins. Photograph: Sylvain Thomas/Getty Images

Their opponents Montpellier lost two pool games: Exeter 42-6 and Leinster 89-7. Wrongly, in my opinion, the EPCR then awarded Montpellier a Covid walkover, 28-0 win on the return leg against Leinster. When finally restored to full health, Montpellier defeated a weakened Exeter 37-26.

Last Sunday Montpellier defeated Harlequins 40-26 on the first leg in France. If Harlequins can not win by more than 15 points at The Stoop, then Montpellier will advance. The even more bizarre outcome will be if Harlequins win, but by less than 15 points, they will hold a record of five wins and one loss. Yet their place in the quarter-finals will be taken by Montpellier who will have won only two matches of actual play.

If you find these possibilities bizarre for any sporting competition, imagine the depth of your consternation if you are a Racing 92 supporter facing their team's possibilities.

Racing 92 are undefeated with five straight wins, all earned by actually playing games of rugby. Unlike Montpellier, no committee scored their tries. Racing have a points differential of 102, which is second only to Leinster across the competition. Racing have played some exhilarating rugby and are flying under the radar as a top performer with a real chance to lift the Heineken Cup.

Their opponents this week are their fellow Parisian arch rivals, Stade Français. Sadly Stade are now a shadow of their former glory and have registered only a single Heineken Cup win in 2021-22, coming against Connacht.

Yet if Stade can somehow find a way to win by 14 points or more, then Racing 92 with five wins from six games will be knocked out of the competition and Stade Français, with two wins across the entire Heineken Cup season will take their place in the quarter-finals.

In rugby’s rosary this would be classified as a “sorrowful mystery”. In the vernacular, it is a complete and utter “balls-up”.

I can honestly say that in over 50 years of playing, coaching and commentating on rugby, I have never seen such an outrageously poorly planned set of unjust competition laws as the ones that are being used in this season's Heineken Cup round of 16.

The round of 16 has created a backdoor into the Heineken Cup quarter-finals for clubs who have lost far too many games to deserve to play in the last eight of Europe. The round of 16 is disempowering winning teams through poorly considered competition rules that are devaluing the most fundamental principle of any sporting competition, which is rewarding the teams that consistently win, in favour of teams that have consistently lost.

On Monday morning, if the best eight clubs in Europe have made it to the Heineken Cup quarter-finals, then it will have been by blind good luck.

While the EPCR are to be complimented for the hard work of keeping the competition alive through the pandemic, it would appear that under the pressure that Covid has applied to professional rugby, some very thinly considered decisions have been made on dropping a round of pool matches and creating the round of 16.

The unintended consequence of those pressurised decisions is that the most fundamental quality of any sporting competition, which is a reward system that is based on merit that is earned by winning games, has been taken away.

Next season the EPCR must produce a just competition structure that provides a pathway for teams that have won the most across the entire season, not just two weekends, to get to the quarter-finals. There can be no backdoor for clubs that fail in the majority of their games. Once this has been established, a home and away quarter-final series would be a welcome and valuable addition to the competition.

What is essential is that those in the stewardship of the Heineken Cup must place the integrity of the competition above the lust for cash. If the injustices of this season’s competition structure are taken forward into next season, the rugby public will walk away in droves. They know their rugby and will not be fooled by the sham.

Just look at the state of Super Rugby if you do not believe the validity of that statement.

If the administrators must create a competition that is merit based, then the Heineken Cup will regain its integrity and return to being the best club competition in the world.

If they don’t, I fear that the Heineken Cup’s slide into rugby obscurity will only accelerate.

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