- Toulon look tasty at 40/1
- Racing 92, QF certainties
- Exeter/Toulouse to both make it through?
Congratulations to those of you who managed to get through Wednesday’s Heineken Champions Cup draw without having to lie in a darkened room afterwards. Most heads were spinning quicker than a roulette wheel.
The competition’s new one-season structure is designed in a such a way as to not only confuse but also jeopardise the chances of some teams, who’d otherwise be among the favourites, even making it beyond the pool stages.
Tough Pool
With just four pool matches, home-and-away fixtures against two opponents, there is very little margin for error and that makes it harder, although not impossible, for teams who play each other to both make it through.
As fine a team as Exeter are, to expect them to beat Toulouse, the side they defeated in last season’s quarter-finals, twice is a very big ask. If they do so, four-time winners Toulouse can kiss goodbye to their hopes of a record fifth title.
Instead, home wins for both coupled with maximum, or close to maximum, points in their other fixture might be enough for both to progress, looking at the other fixtures in Pool B.
Seeds of doubt
Toulouse in many ways have been the victims of the new format because it was based on their relatively modest finishing position of seventh in the Top 14.
Les Rouges et Noir were picking up a real head of steam after a slow start brought about the absence of their many World Cup stars and were gunning for a crack at the play-offs only to be halted in their tracks by lockdown and the decision to end the season early.
We believe they can rise above their false seeding, and join Exeter in the last eight, as they did in 2019/20.
Yellow peril
In any other season, Clermont would be among the certainties for a quarter-final place but not in 2020/21.
Games against proud European competitors Munster and newly-crowned Challenge Cup winners, Bristol Bears, will test them to the limit. That said, Clermont should have enough about them, just, to keep their interest in the competition alive well into next year.
Racing certainties?
Meanwhile, a draw which sees them play Harlequins and Connacht will hold no fears for last season’s beaten finalists Racing 92 (6/1 to win outright).
Another French side, Lyon, are ticking along nicely this season and are generous odds of 40/1 to go all the way and win the Champions Cup. Clearly making the quarter-finals is no guarantee of ultimate success but it’s half the battle.
Who made BB Kingmakers?
On paper, Pool A seems a little out of kilter, mainly because Bordeaux-Begles happened to be top of the Top 14 when the season was stopped abruptly.
As good a team UBB are, they don’t have the European know-how of others and weren’t even competing in the top-tier competition last season.
Second seeds Leinster are probably the only team you could bank on to make the top-four and progress to the quarter-finals. Even so, they should garner enough points from games against Dragons and Northampton Saints to make it through.
Wasps or Bath?
Wasps and Bath haven’t done much in Europe for a few years now but will fancy their chances after the draw was made.
Premiership runners-up Wasps (16/1) have home-and-away games to come against Dragons and Montpellier, while Bath (40/1) face Scarlets and La Rochelle. Three wins out of four is certainly not an impossible task for either of the English sides.
Tou-lon(g) odds
Toulon have been paired together with Scarlets for so many years now they might as well wear the same strip, and in all of those meetings, it is generally Toulon who come out on top.
Their other opponents, Sale Sharks, have always found the dual task of competing in the Premiership and Europe’s top tier competition too challenging in previous years so the men from the Med can be expected to book their place in the last eight.
For a side that won a hat-trick of titles between 2013 and 2015, Toulon are very tastily priced at 40/1.
They don’t have the same number of stars as they once did but they are entering the second season of a rebuilding phase in good shape, and last season’s run to the final of the European Challenge Cup, where they lost to Bristol Bears, shows they have an appetite to do well beyond their own borders.
Pool A Q/F qualifiers: Leinster (5/2), Toulon (40/1), Bordeaux-Begles (20/1), Wasps (16/1)/Bath (40/1)
Pool B Q/F qualifiers: Racing (6/1), Toulouse (15/2), Exeter Chiefs (4/1), Lyon (40/1)
