Complaining about the Champions Cup

[Cameo]

This resting players thing is disappointing (whoever does it). I mainly blame the new format for my decling excitement about Europe but in what other sports do teams routinely rest players because they don't think they will win anyway. Fair enough for tournaments you don't care about, but seems very defeatest. You don't see the smaller football clubs put out weaker teams in the Champions League and they are a mile further away from winning it than most teams in the Champions Cup.

Appreciate player welfare etc. is different too, but something has gone wrong and it makes it hard to sell the sport.

[Which Tyler]

This resting players thing is disappointing (whoever does it). I mainly blame the new format for my decling excitement about Europe but in what other sports do teams routinely rest players because they don't think they will win anyway. Fair enough for tournaments you don't care about, but seems very defeatest. You don't see the smaller football clubs put out weaker teams in the Champions League and they are a mile further away from winning it than most teams in the Champions Cup.

Appreciate player welfare etc. is different too, but something has gone wrong and it makes it hard to sell the sport.

What other (team) sport takes such tolls from the body that a player can't realistically play in every match?
Football certainly isn't a like-for-like in the requirement for recovery time.

[Epaminondas Pules]

This resting players thing is disappointing (whoever does it). I mainly blame the new format for my decling excitement about Europe but in what other sports do teams routinely rest players because they don't think they will win anyway. Fair enough for tournaments you don't care about, but seems very defeatest. You don't see the smaller football clubs put out weaker teams in the Champions League and they are a mile further away from winning it than most teams in the Champions Cup.

Appreciate player welfare etc. is different too, but something has gone wrong and it makes it hard to sell the sport.

What other (team) sport takes such tolls from the body that a player can't realistically play in every match?
Football certainly isn't a like-for-like in the requirement for recovery time.

And even then football is heavy into rotation, but also has squads at the top level to do such.

[Puja]

This resting players thing is disappointing (whoever does it). I mainly blame the new format for my decling excitement about Europe but in what other sports do teams routinely rest players because they don't think they will win anyway. Fair enough for tournaments you don't care about, but seems very defeatest. You don't see the smaller football clubs put out weaker teams in the Champions League and they are a mile further away from winning it than most teams in the Champions Cup.

Appreciate player welfare etc. is different too, but something has gone wrong and it makes it hard to sell the sport.

Agreed. I get what Which and FKAS is saying as well - players have to be rested somewhere, simply by the nature of the sport - but we're struggling to square a circle where we need fewer games for the players, but more games to make the money to pay the players what they need, and the current solution of "Let's rest players en-masse for what should be the premier club competition in the NH" is not a good one.

This article made me laugh: Five Champions Cup learnings from round one. What did we learn?!

"Well, it turns out that, shockingly, every team that sent a second string lost and the team who were playing the 2nd XV looked very good, so any conclusions drawn from those games are utterly specious . We also learned that only 1 game from 12 was close enough to get a losing BP and only 3 games finished within even two scores - even more shockingly, it turns out that all three of those games were ones where both teams played their first XV or something close to it . We have learned so many important new things from this first round where 8/12 games saw the away side effectively conceding the loss at the team selection stage. What a marketable and high-level competition we have here that has certainly not been run into the ground since the English clubs staged their coup! "

Puja

[Cameo]

This resting players thing is disappointing (whoever does it). I mainly blame the new format for my decling excitement about Europe but in what other sports do teams routinely rest players because they don't think they will win anyway. Fair enough for tournaments you don't care about, but seems very defeatest. You don't see the smaller football clubs put out weaker teams in the Champions League and they are a mile further away from winning it than most teams in the Champions Cup.

Appreciate player welfare etc. is different too, but something has gone wrong and it makes it hard to sell the sport.

Agreed. I get what Which and FKAS is saying as well - players have to be rested somewhere, simply by the nature of the sport - but we're struggling to square a circle where we need fewer games for the players, but more games to make the money to pay the players what they need, and the current solution of "Let's rest players en-masse for what should be the premier club competition in the NH" is not a good one.

This article made me laugh: Five Champions Cup learnings from round one. What did we learn?!

"Well, it turns out that, shockingly, every team that sent a second string lost and the team who were playing the 2nd XV looked very good, so any conclusions drawn from those games are utterly specious . We also learned that only 1 game from 12 was close enough to get a losing BP and only 3 games finished within even two scores - even more shockingly, it turns out that all three of those games were ones where both teams played their first XV or something close to it . We have learned so many important new things from this first round where 8/12 games saw the away side effectively conceding the loss at the team selection stage. What a marketable and high-level competition we have here that has certainly not been run into the ground since the English clubs staged their coup! "

Puja

Haha - hard not to agree with that.

Agree with the comments about having to rotate and rest players. I just wish more clubs did it with the starting point of how can we best give ourselves a shot of winning every game rather than aiming to be full strength for some and completely conceding others.

It's not just a Champions Cup issue. One of the reasons Glasgow (just picking the team I know best) have an amazing home record in the URC is because loads of teams send a weakened team. Glasgow are a great team but too many games are just a bit underwhelming as the away side isn't giving it their best shot.

[Puja]

Split this off from the Leicester thread, cause I suspect we're gonna need a place specifically for this conversation topic.

Mod

[Puja]

This resting players thing is disappointing (whoever does it). I mainly blame the new format for my decling excitement about Europe but in what other sports do teams routinely rest players because they don't think they will win anyway. Fair enough for tournaments you don't care about, but seems very defeatest. You don't see the smaller football clubs put out weaker teams in the Champions League and they are a mile further away from winning it than most teams in the Champions Cup.

Appreciate player welfare etc. is different too, but something has gone wrong and it makes it hard to sell the sport.

Agreed. I get what Which and FKAS is saying as well - players have to be rested somewhere, simply by the nature of the sport - but we're struggling to square a circle where we need fewer games for the players, but more games to make the money to pay the players what they need, and the current solution of "Let's rest players en-masse for what should be the premier club competition in the NH" is not a good one.

This article made me laugh: Five Champions Cup learnings from round one. What did we learn?!

"Well, it turns out that, shockingly, every team that sent a second string lost and the team who were playing the 2nd XV looked very good, so any conclusions drawn from those games are utterly specious . We also learned that only 1 game from 12 was close enough to get a losing BP and only 3 games finished within even two scores - even more shockingly, it turns out that all three of those games were ones where both teams played their first XV or something close to it . We have learned so many important new things from this first round where 8/12 games saw the away side effectively conceding the loss at the team selection stage. What a marketable and high-level competition we have here that has certainly not been run into the ground since the English clubs staged their coup! "

Puja

Haha - hard not to agree with that.

Agree with the comments about having to rotate and rest players. I just wish more clubs did it with the starting point of how can we best give ourselves a shot of winning every game rather than aiming to be full strength for some and completely conceding others.

It's not just a Champions Cup issue. One of the reasons Glasgow (just picking the team I know best) have an amazing home record in the URC is because loads of teams send a weakened team. Glasgow are a great team but too many games are just a bit underwhelming as the away side isn't giving it their best shot.

Yeah, a highlight of that BBC article was claiming they were dark horses for the whole competition because they beat up a Sale side missing 6-7 of their first team, alongside touting Pollock as "should be playing for England already" because he looked special against the Castres reserves.

Also, while I'm corralling the complaining about the ERC into one thread, there's also this gem from the newspaper which I posted in the Sweeney thread:

As reported elsewhere, it is understood that TNT Sports offered £14 million for the European competition, but EPCR rejected that and attempts to secure a bigger deal failed. EPCR was then forced to accept an offer for about half as much from Premier Sports.

Wonderful governance.

Puja

[Which Tyler]

Split this off from the Leicester thread, cause I suspect we're gonna need a place specifically for this conversation topic.

Mod

Is this for complaining about the champion's cup, or just about rotating players?

If the former, you'll "need" to split off a LOT more posts than these 5 (which seems way more work than it's worth)

[Oakboy]

My rugby interest is the national team, the club premiership and Europe - a long way back in 3rd place. Every change in format involves more games and reduces my interest more. Only the final knockout stages matter much and only if on terrestial TV. I pay for Sky and TNT but refuse to consider any further pay-to-view channels.

[Puja]

Split this off from the Leicester thread, cause I suspect we're gonna need a place specifically for this conversation topic.

Mod

Is this for complaining about the champion's cup, or just about rotating players?

If the former, you'll "need" to split off a LOT more posts than these 5 (which seems way more work than it's worth)

This is now the new home for bitching about the Champions Cup (I mean, that's what I've set it up as, but I'm not exactly a proscriptive mod - y'all can turn this into another thread about selecting France-based players if you want!). Not gonna go collate other posts (I'm not *that* dedicated!); I just thought we needed a place for the complaining, but didn't have anything that I hadn't already posted elsewhere to start it off with, so I shifted the interesting posts out of the Leicester thread so they weren't buried in a match topic.

Did you want me to move the stuff from the Bath vs La Rochelle thread as well?

Mod

[Mr Mwenda]

My rugby interest is the national team, the club premiership and Europe - a long way back in 3rd place. Every change in format involves more games and reduces my interest more. Only the final knockout stages matter much and only if on terrestial TV. I pay for Sky and TNT but refuse to consider any further pay-to-view channels.

It's funny, I think there was a period during the noughties that the Heineken cup (fans even endorsed the name) had become a staple of viewing at any rugby clubs. I used to enjoy multiple games over the weekend. I'm not sure what happened. Obviously dicking about with the format didn't help. Nor did English clubs declining.

[Stom]

My rugby interest is the national team, the club premiership and Europe - a long way back in 3rd place. Every change in format involves more games and reduces my interest more. Only the final knockout stages matter much and only if on terrestial TV. I pay for Sky and TNT but refuse to consider any further pay-to-view channels.

It's funny, I think there was a period during the noughties that the Heineken cup (fans even endorsed the name) had become a staple of viewing at any rugby clubs. I used to enjoy multiple games over the weekend. I'm not sure what happened. Obviously dicking about with the format didn't help. Nor did English clubs declining.

Well, since then we’ve had 20 years of absence from terrestrial tv… makes a massive difference.

[twitchy]

I didn't watch a single minute of the CC this weekend, I didn't even look at the results. Not a great sign for the health of the competition.

[fivepointer]

There are 3 main issues.

The format.
Inclusion of SA sides.
The poor performance of English teams.

The fact that TNT didnt get the broadcasting rights is just another reason to lose interest.

French sides have regularly rested players and sent out 2nd teams - i think Castres did that at the weekend. Its not ideal but the disparity in class from the very top sides to the rest has grown and frankly there are games that are pretty much unwinnable for a lot of teams.

Right now European games come a long way down the pecking order for me. Frankly i'm not overly bothered with them.

[Puja]

If we were sorting it out, I'd reduce it down to 16 teams. Four from Prem, six from T14, six from URC. Reorder the season so that we're not trying to be football with interwoven domestic and club, and instead make it a serial affair - domestic runs from September to March, European runs from April to mid-June, taking up 9 weeks in the calendar. 4 pools of 4, home and away fixtures in the pools, so 6 pool games, 3 knockouts.

That way, you get a structure and a storyline to the season - clubs compete in their domestic leagues and then *that year's team* goes on to compete for cross-border comp glory (rather than the old English problem of a side qualifying after a run of hot form who have since gone off the boil) - as well as a competition structure that everyone understands and that no-one has to be reminded how it works after a gap of a month for domestic matches.

I'm not a fan of the Saffers being involved, but that's mostly because the bits and pieces fixtures approach at present makes the travel an impossible hindrance. If they're staying in the URC then I think they have to be involved, so set the bloody thing up so that they can be involved - if we're playing the pool games in a bloc, then there's no reason why they can't play all three home games, followed by all three away games so they can effectively go on tour to Europe, and European sides wouldn't be forced to fit travelling in amongst their domestic matches, but would instead just be concentrating on the ERC. You could even make it akin to a club world cup if that would bring in the money - invite the Kiwis and Aussies every four years and stage it all in one country.

Puja

[BaldiePete]

I'm not a fan of the Saffers being involved, but that's mostly because the bits and pieces fixtures approach at present makes the travel an impossible hindrance. If they're staying in the URC then I think they have to be involved, so set the bloody thing up so that they can be involved - if we're playing the pool games in a bloc, then there's no reason why they can't play all three home games, followed by all three away games so they can effectively go on tour to Europe, and European sides wouldn't be forced to fit travelling in amongst their domestic matches, but would instead just be concentrating on the ERC.

Puja

This is what happens in the URC. The NH teams go down to SA for matches against two of their teams with the other two teams played when they do a mini-tour up here. The SA teams usually play three away matches in the NH on their mini-tours.

[Banquo]

Good observations, might as well put here!

https://www.thetimes.com/sport/rugby-un ... -vxwr9bhqb

Why Ebbw Vale’s revenge over Toulouse makes case for old European format
Welsh side’s violent but magical win over the French giants — weeks after a 100-point drubbing — is a reminder of the lost magic of home-and-away European rugby
Elgan Alderman
Wednesday December 11 2024, 8.15am, The Times
Arampant Toulouse overwhelmed Ulster at Stade Ernest-Wallon on Sunday. In the final analysis, 61-21 was not as dominant a scoreline as seemed inevitable early in the second half. Once, Ulster would swiftly have had an opportunity for revenge at the Kingspan Stadium. No longer, such is the format of the Investec Champions Cup.

The former rhythm of Europe gave teams two cracks at each pool-stage opponent, and December was when there would be home-and-away ties on successive weekends. The post-Covid schedule has deprived us of such encounters, though organisers dabbled in a two-legged round of 16 in 2021-22, bringing together Ulster and Toulouse. The Irish province won 26-20 in France, only to lose at home 30-23 for what, in a knockout situation, would have been a one-point aggregate defeat. In three of the eight matches, the leader after week one lost the tie overall.

The old way allowed for the old cliché: that French teams did not travel well and often, frankly, didn’t care. The effects of desire, acclimatisation and sporting happenstance permitted examples galore where the output of teams differed drastically against the same opposition. In 1999-2000, Montferrand beat Cardiff 46-13 at the Stade Marcel-Michelin and lost 30-5 at Cardiff Arms Park. Two seasons later, Toulouse beat Newcastle Falcons and Leinster by a combined margin of 76-20 at home and lost the away fixtures 82-19. Even in the more recent era there could be Jekyll and Hyde showings, such as in 2017-18 when Castres Olympique lost 54-29 at Welford Road and beat Leicester Tigers 39-0 in France.


Bourgoin had a tremendous capacity for indifference. The Isérois lost 92-17 away to Leinster in 2004 and, six days later, narrowed the margin to 26-23 in France. The following season, drawn together once more, they lost 53-7 in Dublin and, seven days later, won 30-28 at home.

Even Bourgoin, however, pale by comparison to Ebbw Vale. The Steelmen’s debut in the 1998-99 Heineken Cup did not go well: a 108-16 defeat in Toulouse. Seven weeks later, at Eugene Cross Park, remarkably they beat Toulouse 19-11. Show me a greater moment in sport and I simply won’t believe you.

So commanding were Toulouse in the first fixture that the scoreboard read 08-16 until a steward arrived to hold a 1 in front of the two-digit offering. “We are devastated by the result — we came here positively but were amazed by the pace and power we met,” Leigh Jones, the Vale head coach, said. There were reports that some Welsh players — Ebbw Vale also had Kuli Faletau, the Tongan father of Taulupe, at lock — had a surreptitious cigarette next to the team bus on arrival (which, observing cliché, should have had an equalising effect).

It was the latest in a succession of Welsh shambles. Cardiff and Swansea were undertaking a rebel season of friendlies against English clubs, amid talk of a British league. The national side had recently lost 60-26 at Twickenham, 51-0 at Wembley against France and 96-13 against the Springboks at Loftus Versfeld. After Ebbw Vale lost 61-28 at home to Ulster, Jones said the nation would need to focus its European efforts on three or four provinces, rather than a scattering of clubs.


To a cold Eugene Cross Park, then. “I can remember Mark Jones telling the Toulouse players to remember to bring their wellies with them when they came to Eugene Cross Park because it wasn’t going to be anything like it was in the south of France,” Jason Strange, the full back who moved to fly half for the return fixture, remembered years later.

These were interesting times for referees. Chuck Muir required a police escort at Swansea in 1995 before Castres players smashed the windows of the referee’s room in dismay at his performance. The official in Ebbw Vale was Eddie Murray, a Scotsman with Five Nations experience. A year earlier Murray had overseen the Battle of Brive: a 32-31 defeat for Pontypridd memorable not only for the violence on the field but also in the city that night. Thirteen days later the sides met again at Sardis Road for a 29-29 draw and then had a third encounter in the quarter-final play-offs, with Brive winning at home 25-20.

“It’s still on YouTube because my son takes great delight in showing my grandchildren me standing around looking at 20 guys fighting with each other,” Murray tells The Times. “I’d completely forgotten about the Ebbw Vale game until you mentioned it.”

The Toulousain view was that Murray had whistled them off the park with “anti-French bias”, materialising in a penalty count of 33 against the visiting team. Murray’s counter is that, frustrated by their nominally inferior opposition, Toulouse lost all air of discipline. Emptying their bench of internationals in the final quarter could not change a thing.

“They were a bit upset because they came over thinking it was going to be an easy runout for them and they didn’t like it when it wasn’t,” Andrew Metcalfe, the Ebbw Vale prop, said at the time. “All the French sides are the same when things go against them, they just lose it.”

A late try for Toulouse, after a beautiful flowing move, was ruled out because a touch judge had seen one of the artisans throw a few punches once he had passed the ball. Cyril Vancheri was the only man sent off, for stamping, another decision the Toulousains didn’t like (they reckoned Fabien Pelous’s head had just been trodden on, too).

“Near the end, there was an incident which all three of us missed,” Murray says. “We were staying in Newport, along with three French referees, who were over doing one of the other games. When we got back to the hotel, they said we’ve just received a phone call from French TV — watch BBC Wales or something at 10pm. They’d picked up some guy karate-kicking, running, jumping and launching foot-first into a ruck, or a maul it probably was, which we hadn’t seen, but they’d seen it. And they couldn’t believe this guy was doing it.

“Obviously, I hadn’t got the points across that I wanted to the players, so they weren’t listening. Sometimes you got games where the red smoke just comes down over their eyes.


“We weren’t prepared to take any of the shit that sometimes was coming our way when you come up against players who want to use violence. And the annoying thing was, they didn’t need to. They were a bloody good side.”

The chaos did not stop at the final whistle. Police were needed to restore order — one officer’s helmet was knocked off, to great shock — and Toulouse claimed stones were thrown at them as they left the field. Murray tried to coordinate a swift departure with his touch judges but Franck Tournaire, the Toulouse prop, managed to approach one of them, Ken McCartney, for an exchange of views. There was a contretemps with supporters in the clubhouse and the visiting team did not attend the post-match function.

As a result of the defeat, Ulster — and not Toulouse — topped the pool. After a suitably lopsided pair of fixtures — Toulouse won 39-3 in France, Ulster won 29-24 at Ravenhill — they were drawn together again in the quarter-finals. Ulster won 15-13 and finished as champions of Europe.

Alas, Ulster will not host Toulouse this season. How to restore the home-and-away nature of Europe? Perhaps there is something in this: a 32-team knockout competition, in which the first two rounds are both over two legs, followed by standalone quarter-finals, semi-finals and final. It would not have saved Ebbw Vale’s qualification hopes, given the aggregate defeat was 119-35, but they had their shot at revenge — and boy did they take it.

[Puja]

Good observations, might as well put here!

https://www.thetimes.com/sport/rugby-un ... -vxwr9bhqb

[Cameo]

Wouldn't cutting down the teams to 16 in each competition fix half the problems. Yeah, not every team would be in Europe but that might even help, the weaker teams would have fewer games and have to rotate less, giving them more chance in their domestic leagues against the top teams.

Four pools of four, six games then quarter finals. If you want fewer games, make it one legged in the group stages (not ideal but better than the current lottery).

There might be less money as a result of the fewer games but I'm not convinced in the medium term. The old Heineken Cup had me desperate for Sky, the current mess only really engages me once it gets to the knockouts. TV companies will realise this, if they haven't already. Anyway, we need fewer games overall so something has to give.

[Oakboy]

Back to interesting rugby this weekend!

[twitchy]

Yeah I actually enjoyed the time off from rugby. Excited for the games this weekend.