Can we have our Champions Cup back please? Can we have a proper salivating of lips when looking forward to what ought to be a mega-tie between joint three-time champions, Toulon and Saracens, and not have instead a raising of eyebrows when one of the coaches, Sarries’ Mark McCall, reveals six days beforehand that he would be fielding a weakened side.
Instead of a firecracker we have a damp squib. Instead of one of those games that puts club rugby (briefly) on the same newsworthy agenda as football, we have a potential non-event in prospect. Instead of a match that encourages you to believe that club rugby cedes nothing to the international game in terms of level of play, of thrust and grit, of punch and counter-punch, of tribal roar and thunder, we have a run-of-the-mill contest on the cards.
Oh, for those days of joy when Brive and Leicester and Wasps and Toulouse, always Toulouse, and yes, these two very self-same clubs, Toulon and Saracens, went at it hammer and tongs, and made you feel that rugby had at least got this particular tournament so very right.
Instead we are left with a sense of regret. It’s not just McCall’s intended under-clubbed selection. He could have chosen differently, rested his England men immediately after the Six Nations championship as, for example, Harlequins did. But he felt a responsibility to his club’s sponsors for their annual Big Bash affair at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and duly fielded those top-end players such as Maro and Ben Earl and Tom Willis, all of whom had done a energy-sapping shift during the Six Nations.
Not that it did McCall’s team much good as Quins did as they have so often done and rolled back the stone for the seeming dead to overhaul Saracens from a losing position to claim the spoils. The same may even happen at the Stade Mayol on Saturday with an under-strength Sarries outfit showing what they can offer to a club in transition and lay claim to more recognition in the future. Teenage outside back, Angus Hall, did his prospects no harm at all last weekend at Welford Rd on his first league start with a splendid one-handed touchdown in the corner.
All these scenarios, of glorious upsets and victories against the odds, is not the point. The competition is devalued by the very possibility that teams may not put out their best XV. You can’t imagine Arsenal and Real Madrid weighing up their options ahead of next week’s Champions League quarter-final with a view to resting Saliba or Bellingham so that they would be in better shape for the following week’s league programme.
Welfare underpins McCall’s decision. So we shouldn’t really be bleating. It’s not his fault. Except for the fact that he shouldn’t be facing this particular dilemma in the first place.
And, yet, here we are. Rugby’s calendar is in a right old pickle if it allows this sort of situation to happen. You could argue, too, that this Round of 16 is an unnecessary add-on to a crowded fixture list. Organisers will always wriggle this way or that way to justify their chosen set-up, to articulate why such-and-such a game must take place. Next year’s Six Nations has been trimmed from seven weeks to six weeks without a by-your-leave as regards player welfare. Likewise, all the current chat about a putative money-spinning pre-Lions Lions fixture against France or some other glitzy concoction from the Las Vegas Strip. What place the player in all this? Meat for the mincer as always.
Welfare underpins McCall’s decision. So we shouldn’t really be bleating. It’s not his fault. Except for the fact that he shouldn’t be facing this particular dilemma in the first place. It never used to be this way. And with better collective planning the schedule ought to be more sympathetically put together. Good luck on that one. Directors of rugby are between a rock and a hard place. But prime-time Saracens, when they ruled the European roost, would never have considered heading to the cauldron that is the Stade Felix Mayol without a blast of the bugle to summon their best warriors for the battle ahead.
Perhaps this newish Champions Cup format also plays a part in shaping hands with the quarter-final opponent already pencilled. Even Toulon, riding high in third place in the Top 14, will not be relishing the thought of heading to one of the teams above them in the French league, Stade Toulousain, for a place in the last four.
Maybe it’s too simplistic to say but there were never any complaints about the Champions Cup set-up when it was six rounds in the pool stages, (three times back-to-back weekends from October to early January) followed by straight last eight knockout at this stage onwards. Oh, happy days.
Those Saracens’ fans who have already paid their way to the Cote d’Azur will have offered up prayers that their men can step up to the plate.
Fingers crossed then that we do get a fierce contest on Saturday at the Mayol. Certainly those Saracens’ fans who have already paid their way to the Cote d’Azur will have offered up prayers that their men can step up to the plate. They might well enjoy the experience anyway for the Mayol, an uniquely hemmed-in venue and roared on by one of the most partisan followings in the land, is a special place.
And Saracens, in this rebuilding phase, do at least travel with a little bit of form in their boots following their must-win trip to Leicester where they duly delivered the victory that keeps them in the play-off conversation. McCall’s words post-victory were particularly on-point.
“We felt like a team again,” said McCall. “That’s the feeling we want to chase all year. We’re back in the fight.”
Well, back in the Premiership fight at any rate. It’s ironic that it is an English club that finds itself undermining the competition with a sub-par selection. That was the stone thrown so often thrown at French clubs when their priority was the domestic league. Toulon, who had had such a yo-yo existence, changed their view of Europe when Mourad Boudjellal, begin his campaign of galactico conquest. “It’s a chance to put Toulon on the map,” said the millionaire owner who made his fortune through comic strips so knew all about the importance of the message. The Sir Jonny era certainly delivered with three European titles on the bounce and a coveted Top 14 League and European Cup Double in 2014.
This generation, spurred by a Brit contingent in the shape of David Ribbans, Lewis Ludlam, Kyle Sinckler, Dan Biggar and Ben White, are right in the mix for honours. Of course, Begles-Bordeaux and Stade Toulousain, are the market-leaders in France while Leinster are geared up to rectify that spirit-sapping near-miss record.
Toulon-Saracens may yet yield a rafter-raising occasion in much the manner that we expect Leinster-Harlequins or, fingers-crossed, the O’Gara derby when Munster travel to La Rochelle, to so do.
We can but hope. But the tournament is the poorer for even considering that it won’t.
