Cream rising to top again in Champions Cup – Andy Goode

The Champions Cup has had its detractors in recent years but it’s still the best club competition in the world and the cream is rising to the top again.

The new format may mean a couple of teams have made it through to the knockout stages with just one win on the board but it did its job in reducing the number of dead rubbers in the pool stages and getting us an extra round of the serious stuff at this time of year.

I could see the attraction in bringing in an FA Cup style draw from this point on to create even more jeopardy but I do think it’s right that teams are rewarded for their form during the pool games and I like the fact you can map out who will face who in the quarter-finals next weekend.

History tells us you only normally get a couple of away wins out of eight Champions Cup knockout ties, with home sides winning 71 per cent of the time, and my money is on La Rochelle and Bath to be the big winners on the road.

Stormers players celebrate following their victory during the European Rugby Champions Cup, Pool 4 Rugby Union match between Stormers and Stade Rochelais (La Rochelle) at the DHL Stadium in Cape Town on December 16, 2023. (Photo by Gianluigi Guercia / AFP) (Photo by GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP via Getty Images)

The champions have to travel to South Africa to face the Stormers but the trip to Cape Town isn’t anywhere near as daunting as going to Pretoria with all the issues associated with altitude and they should have won there back in December.

They’ve got even more of their big men back and firing now too and I think the physicality of the likes of Will Skelton, Uini Atonio, Levani Botia, Greg Alldritt and Jonathan Danty will get them over the line.

Bath may not have quite the same giant humans as La Rochelle but the back row of Ted Hill, Sam Underhill and Alfie Barbeary is enough to cause any team problems and they definitely have the edge over Exeter in the halfbacks with Ben Spencer and Finn Russell.

The Chiefs have surpassed everyone’s expectations so far this season but they’re an extremely young side and a few cracks have just started to show in recent weeks so I think there’ll be an away win at Sandy Park too.

Saracens are normally a team you can back to win on the road in a major knockout game but they were hammered 55-15 in Bordeaux in January and the absence of Owen Farrell is a massive blow to their hopes.

Bordeaux-Begles' French fly-half Matthieu Jalibert celebrates as he runs to score Bordeaux's sixth try during the European Rugby Champions Cup Pool 1 rugby union match between Union Bordeaux-Begles (UBB) (FRA) and Saracens (ENG) at the Chaban-Delmas Stadium in Bordeaux, south-western France on January 14, 2024. (Photo by ROMAIN PERROCHEAU / AFP) (Photo by ROMAIN PERROCHEAU/AFP via Getty Images)

That is one of as many as five repeat fixtures from the pool stages, which is something that will probably never happen again once the format is tweaked, but I don’t see that as being a major issue at all.

It didn’t look ideal when the Round Of 16 match-ups fell that way at the end of January but we’ve had a break of almost three months since then and now they just feel like intriguing standalone fixtures, with the recent meetings adding a bit of extra spice if anything.

If things go to form, there’ll be a couple more repeat match-ups in the quarter-finals as well. Leinster are odds-on favourites to beat Leicester and that could set up a mouth-watering clash with La Rochelle in Dublin and I think Toulouse will be too strong for Racing so they could be welcoming Bath to the south of France again.

Then I think Northampton will be welcoming the Bulls and Bordeaux hosting Harlequins to complete the quarter-final line-up and, as well as home advantage counting, I think that shows that the cream is rising to the top as it always does in this competition.

The English clubs had a fantastic opening weekend back in December with seven of them winning in the same round of the Champions Cup for the first time ever, despite the fact they had been written off due to the financial issues in the Premiership.

However, things were always likely to even themselves out a bit over the course of four rounds and we have ended up with a very balanced split of six clubs from the Premiership, five from the URC and five from the Top 14 in this year’s Round Of 16.

Stade Rochelais player Will Skelton celebrates on the final whistle during the Heineken Champions Cup Final between Leinster Rugby and Stade Rochelais at Aviva Stadium on May 20, 2023 in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

If it goes the way I think it will, there’ll be at least a couple of teams from each league in the quarter-finals next weekend as well and then it’ll be the teams with the pedigree at this level and the greater power in their game that prevail.

Knockout rugby is a different beast and they used to say defence wins championships, it still does to a certain extent, but nowadays it’s power and physicality that gets you over the line more often than not in big one-off games.

We’ve seen that in the World Cup and Six Nations, as well as in the latter stages of the Champions Cup in the past few years, and you can’t look past the usual suspects of La Rochelle, Toulouse and Leinster on that basis.

It’d be great to see a side like Northampton with their free-flowing attacking game, combined with a bit more pragmatism and steel this season, crash the party but sheer size and experience is likely to count when it comes to the quarters and semis.

There’ll no doubt be some phenomenal rugby this weekend with a bit of South African sunshine and some English endeavour adding to proceedings but expect the French and Irish juggernauts to be the last ones standing in the weeks to come.