No more silly semi-final draw for the Champions Cup
No more silly draw for home country advantage in the semi-finals of the Champions Cup. It never made sense. And that’s the good news. And the new solution is certainly… novel. A few words on the new system for the Irish Times, published in the print edition of Wednesday November 11th, 2015.
Aside from that, with regard to what prize the Challenge Cup winners earn I thought it worth mentioning that EPC Rugby told me they’ve made no final decision on whether they’ll return to a playoff system after this season. Good to know, that. Because there really needs to be an incentive for certain sides to take Europe’s secondary competition seriously, and getting straight into the Champions Cup certainly provides such an incentive.
And a few words on how we might all learn from the French. No, seriously. You’ll see what I mean.
If you weren’t confused before about the Champions Cup . . . you will be now
The semi-final draw is no longer part of rugby’s European Cup. Even with the traditional quirks of the competition – the minnows; the back to back fixtures; the varied inclinations of the French towards the merits of foreign travel – having semi-final home advantage decided at random before the quarter-finals had kicked off was something that has never sat quite right.
From this season this will change, with a wrinkle.
“With a semi-final draw there was less of a chance of rewarding performance” said an EPC Rugby spokesperson.
“An example last year would have been, at the end of the pool stage the top-ranked team Racing 92 played the eighth-ranked team Saracens in a quarter-final. Saracens won, yet still had been drawn in an away semi-final.”
Under the new system Saracens would have had a semi-final against Leinster in England while Clermont and Toulon would have faced off in a semi-final in France rather than a final in London. That’s just one of the many set paths to a home semi-final that a team might take.
“Trying to explain it theoretically, it’s almost impossible to do it concisely”, said the spokesperson.
Challenge accepted, said the Irish Times…
