Can changes save the Investec Champions Cup’s unloved pool stage?

European rugby’s premier club competition returns this week, interrupting the various league competitions with an early round of fixtures.

The change to the scheduling might bring autumnal sunshine and better pitches but it remains to be seen if it can breathe life into the tournament.

There is still a lack of jeopardy about a group stage where 16 of the 24 competing teams qualify for the knockouts and another four drop into the Challenge Cup. It means it will take 48 Champions Cup games to eliminate four clubs from ‘Europe’.

Resistance is growing, with France leading the way. The current format is supposed to be locked in until 2030 but Yann Roubert, president of the French Ligue Nationale de Rugby, wants to cut the number of teams in the Champions Cup.

The case for a more ‘elitist’ Champions Cup

“We are in favour of having a more elite European competition, maybe by coming down to 16 clubs rather than 24, so we have only very high-level matches,” Roubert said.

His proposal would see each of the three leagues – URC, French Top 14 and English Prem – supply five teams to the Champions Cup, with the other place going to the previous season’s winners.

EPCR, the body which runs the European club rugby competitions, is trying its best to revive its crown jewels, promising this week that, “thrilling fixtures are on the menu as the Investec Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup return this Friday”.

Investec Champions Cup changes are cosmetic rather than radical

But the alterations being introduced this season are cosmetic rather than radical and unlikely to appease the French and others agitating for an overhaul. Aside from bringing the first round of fixtures forward from December to mid-October, the bonus-point system has been tweaked.

A bonus point will now be awarded to a club scoring at least three tries more than their opponents, rather than for scoring four tries. It’s an idea borrowed from the French Top 14 and is designed to reward sides committed to attack. The likelihood is that it will favour those clubs who already dominate the competition.

The other big rule change is around qualification to the round of 16. This season, the top three clubs in each pool will automatically qualify, as opposed to the top four.

But there will still be 16 qualifiers, with the remaining four places awarded to the clubs finishing outside the top three with the highest number of match points across all four pools, regardless of which pool they are in.

The idea behind this one is to stop scenarios like last season’s when Leicester Tigers and the Bulls both qualified for the last 16 by winning only one of their four pool games while the Sharks were eliminated despite winning two.

The temptation to field weakened teams

The problem with such generous qualification criteria is that some clubs are tempted to field weakened teams in certain matches, safe in the knowledge that they should still be able to make it through the group stage.

Glasgow Warriors were a refreshing antidote to this last season. They went full pelt in all four pool matches and won each one with a bonus point, including a thrilling comeback victory over six-time champions Toulouse at Scotstoun.

Such was their form that Franco Smith’s side were seeded second in the knockout rounds but only made it as far as the quarter-finals where they lost at home to Toulon.

A missed opportunity for Glasgow Warriors

It felt like a missed opportunity for Glasgow but they go again this season, the only Scottish representatives in the Champions Cup as Edinburgh are in the second-tier Challenge Cup.

For the third season in a row, the Warriors will open their campaign against Sale Sharks and they will be looking to make it a hat-trick of victories against the team from Greater Manchester when they play in the CorpAcq Stadium on Saturday. Home games against Pau and Leicester will follow for Smith’s squad before they round off their Pool 1 campaign against Clermont away, another repeat fixture from last season.

No Scottish club has lifted European club rugby’s top trophy, nor even reached the final, with Edinburgh’s run to the semis in 2012 being the best showing so far. It is a tournament that has been dominated by French clubs in recent years, with La Rochelle, Toulouse and Bordeaux Begles each boasting two wins apiece across the last six editions.

Few would bet against Toulouse and Bordeaux to maintain the Gallic streak this time around and the bookmakers have them as firm favourites.

If Glasgow are to do what no other Scottish club has done before, they are almost certainly going to have to topple one of the French giants at some point in the competition but last year’s exploits should stand them in good stead.

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the club’s first foray into Europe. To all intents and purposes it was still the old Glasgow district side that travelled to Wales to take on Newbridge in the Challenge Cup in 1996 in the very early days of professionalism.

Derek Stark scored four tries and there were two apiece for Kenny Logan and Alan Bulloch as Glasgow won 62-38.

It is the sort of scoreline that is back in vogue today as teams trade tries with abandon, helped by law changes that favour attacking sides.

There is little to suggest they help the underdogs, however, and it’s why the final in Lyon on May 22 next year could see another French coronation.