Irish provinces await their fate in Champions Cup draw

A new format for the new season, but one that's no more popular than the last.

Over the past couple of seasons, rugby fans in the northern hemisphere have been pining for the good old days of the Heineken Champions Cup.

With the competition bumped from 20 to 24 teams in recent seasons, and the available game weeks falling from nine to eight in 2022, we won’t see the return of that classic format any time soon unless the French make concessions to their own calendar, an unlikely prospect to say the least.

So here we are, with 24 teams and eight weekends available to crown a champion, and it all starts with Wednesday’s pool stage draw at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, the venue which will host next season's final.

In last week’s announcement for the revamped Heineken Champions Cup, EPCR chairman Dominic McKay spoke of their goal that "everyone can easily understand, engage with and follow our tournaments". Reaction online to the new layout would suggest they haven’t nailed that brief.

The format of the last three seasons saw two 12-team pools, where each side was assigned two opponents whom they would face home and away in December and January. After that, the top eight teams would advance to the knockout stage.

Its critics pointed to a lack of jeopardy, where two thirds of the competition would still be standing after 48 games, while the larger pools left many fans confused week on week, with each team having different opponents to each other.

For example, last season Ulster faced La Rochelle and Sale Sharks, with Sale Sharks taking on Ulster and Toulouse, and La Rochelle going up against Northampton Saints. It was the fourth round of games before teams really knew which matches mattered beyond their own.

The EPCR