Barmy to downgrade the Champions Cup

ACCORDING to its promoters, the 'wonderful' Champions Cup stands on a pinnacle above everything else as 'the greatest club competition in the world.'

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Self-praise, of course, is no recommendation and yet there can be no denying the climactic splendour of last month’s denouement on a scale grand enough to break all manner of box-office records. The 154,528 at both semi-finals and final saw matches superior in quality to some of those played in the Six Nations.

As chairman of European Professional Club Rugby, Dominic McKay’s dutiful acclamation of the thunderous finale sounded as if he was about to slap a preservation order around it, fearful lest Europe’s blue riband event should be cut down like the Sycamore Gap tree along Hadrian’s Wall.

The botanical giant had been around ten times longer than the 30-year-old European Cup, truly an object of wonder and greatness.

In using the same two adjectives, McKay was about to confirm that the tournament would be subjected to some severe pruning.

So much for being so wonderful and so great. Once every four years from 2028 there will be no champion of the Champions Cup, no final of any description let alone one as good as Bordeaux-Northampton last week, no semi-finals, no quarter-finals.

In its endlessly elusive search for the money to make the game pay, rugby has explored all sorts of avenues post-professionalism only to find a dead-end on most. There have been some barmy ideas along the way and now there is this one, to downgrade the wonderful and great Champions Cup into a support act for something else.

It means that the 2027-28 edition will be left high and dry, abandoned as soon as the last eight have qualified for non-existent quarter-finals. Instead they will gain admission to the World Club Cup to be held once every four years in between World Cups and Lions tours.