European Cups: Why Should Fans Care When Teams Don’t?
December 6th, 2024 brought the start of one of my favorite rugby competitions, the European Champions Cup (actually called the Investec Champions Cup, but who cares about that, right?). Oh, and also the European Challenge Cup as well. For those who have not heard of these competitions, the Champions Cup was made up of the top six teams from the 12 team English Premiership (Gallagher Premiership), the top team from each of the four countries that made up the Pro12 (now the United Rugby Championship) and then the three highest ranked teams not already picked, and the top seven teams from the Top14 to make a 20 team tournament. The Challenge Cup was made up of the remaining teams from each competition plus an invitational team from around Europe to make a 20 team tournament.
As I said, the Champions Cup (and also the Challenge Cup, I guess) was my favorite club competition, and that was mostly because it was really cool to see so many different playing styles going against each other in one competition. You had teams from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Italy (Pro12), England and France (Top14) all competing against each other; with each team bringing their own unique tactics and flair. Where else could you see such a display of diversity outside of World Cups? Unfortunately, though, nothing good lasts forever.
After constantly changing the format (and the individual competitions either adding or losing teams) the Champions Cup is now comprised of the top eight teams (out of what is now just a ten team competition) from the Gallagher Premiership (Prem), the top eight (out of 16 teams) from the United Rugby Championship (URC), and the top eight (out of 14 teams) from the Top14. This all comes together to create a 24 team tournament. The Challenge Cup is made up of the lower ranked eight teams from the URC, two (?!) teams from the Prem, six teams from the Top14 and two invitational teams to make an 18 team tournament. David Lawrence and his guests Huw Griffin and Harley Worthy do a great job going over how the formatting of these tournaments actually work on the Scrum of the Earth podcast.
This brings us to my first issue with both European competitions. I kinda understand why they went with eight teams from each of the “feeder” competitions. The URC gained four teams from South Africa causing the league to go from 12 to 16 teams, and eight across the board is simple. The real issue is when we look at the Prem. It only has TEN teams due to terrible financials causing teams to disappear. How can eighty percent of a suffering league qualify? That makes no sense. Throw in the fact that doing this has increased the Champions Cup from 20 to 24 teams, decreased the Challenge cup from 20 to 18 teams. Why? Eight from the URC, five from the Prem and seven from the Top14 equals 20 teams for both competitions, but if they did that then the English league would have the least amount of representation in both of the competitions. Seeing as both the Prem and the Rugby Football Union (the governing body of rugby in England) each get a vote on the structure of the European tournaments, and the entirety of the URC only gets one vote, it’s safe to say that scenario won’t happen. The guys on the United Rugby Rewind go into this topic in great detail, and also bring up my real gripe with both of the European competitions.
The real issue I have is how everything is scheduled. Both the URC and the Prem played seven of their 18 rounds, while the Top14 played 14 out of their 26 rounds… Wait, what?! Why does a 14 team competition need to play 26 rounds of a regular season?! The NFL has 32 teams, where each team only plays 16 games in a 17 week season. I digress… before each competition pressed pause so the European tournaments could play two rounds of pool play before each competition pressed play again. Why? Why play your domestic season congruently with your European tournaments when you could easily finish your domestic season and then go into your European tournaments. It would take the same amount of time, and plus this way you would be able to pick the current best teams from each competition to be in the Champions Cup. If you play them at the same time you can’t do that. Teams currently qualify to play in the Champions Cup by being good the previous season. This is how you end up with a winless Exeter Chiefs playing in the Champions Cup only to get slaughtered. Real compelling stuff there.
Running them at the same time also forces most teams to have to choose which one they’re going to take seriously. French teams in general are pretty notorious for not caring about winning matches. At least five out of seven home teams will win every week in the Top14 just because French teams don’t see winning away matches as important (I bet that would change real quick if they only played 16 matches instead of 26). Now put those same teams in European competitions and a lot of them won’t even bother putting out full strength sides at home; especially if they’re struggling in the Top14.
That goes for teams in the other competitions too though. Edinburgh actually has a good chance of doing well in the Challenge Cup, but because they aren’t doing too well in the URC they’ve decided to mostly rest their big names during Europe in hopes to improve their standings in the URC. All four South African teams have taken this approach as well. The Hollywood Bets Sharks won their first match against the woeful Exeter, but then didn’t bother to play seven of their best players against Leicester to lose 56-17. If the teams don’t care about the matches then why should fans? This point was really driven home by the guys on The Rugby Odds.
Even if teams do care about winning the Champions Cups, the new format and the addition of four teams has led to less caring. The old format was pool play to quarter finals to semi finals to finals, but now there is a round of 16 in between pool play and the quarters. The reason this is a big deal is because there is a lower bar of entry for the round of 16 due to four out of the six teams in each pool moving on. Teams really just have to win one match and just manage to get losing bonus points in their other matches and they’re in for the round of 16. Why go hard in every pool match and risk injuring your best players when you don’t have to?
All of these things have led to empty stands at almost every European match. What were supposed to be the end-all, be-all tournaments of the entire Northern Hemisphere have been reduced to competitions in which at least half the teams competing in them don’t care if they win or lose. These really were my favorite club tournaments, but if the teams don’t care, then why should I?
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