- Toulon look tasty at 40/1
- Racing 92, QF certainties
- Exeter/Toulouse to both make it through?
Forty days have passed since the Heineken Champions Cup draw was conducted, yet most people are still trying to get their heads around the new two-pool format.
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, though, and join Gallagher Premiership pace-setters 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 in fifth place in the Top 14 with only two defeats to their name in nine matches, and are generous odds of 40/1 to go all the way and win the Champions Cup.
Clearly, it would take a major turnaround in their fortunes from last season when they finished third in their pool behind Leinster and Northampton if they are to justify our faith in them.
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, UBB should garner enough points from games against Dragons and Northampton Saints to make it through.
Wasps or Bath?
Bath haven’t done much in Europe for a few years now but with a morale-boosting win at Worcester behind them and their England contingent back, they will fancy their chances of kicking off the campaign with maximum points against Scarlets.
Top 14 leaders La Rochelle are a different proposition altogether, though, and another pool exit looks probable for the West Country under-achievers.
As for 16/1 shots Wasps, injuries have come at the wrong time for a tilt at Europe. But they still should have enough in their locker to get sufficient points in the bag against Dragons and Montpellier to make it through to the last eight.
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. Results from this season’s PRO14 suggest that nothing will change this year.
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.
The English and Irish have monopolised the Champions Cup trophy since Toulon won the last of their three titles in 2015. But with five of the quarter-finalists forecasted to be French, the feel-good factor in rugby across the channel at the moment through the exploits of the national team could be replicated at club level too.
Pool A Q/F qualifiers: Leinster (5/2), Toulon (40/1), Bordeaux-Begles (20/1), Wasps (16/1)
Pool B Q/F qualifiers: Racing (6/1), Toulouse (15/2), Exeter Chiefs (4/1), Clermont (12/1) or Lyon (40/1)
