We want to be able to look back on a trophy McInally thinks team have learned
Scottish teams gear up for the new look Champions Cup
GLASGOW Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby will both take part in a new-look Champions Cup format next season, with four more teams competing but fewer pool games being played.
A convoluted seeding process will see all 24 teams – eight each from the PRO14, the
French Top 14 and the English Premiership – being divided into four tiers before then being split into two pools. Edinburgh will be in the top tier if they beat Ulster in Saturday’s semi-final, but
Tier Two if they lose. Glasgow will be in Tier Three, having finished third in Conference A.
Each club will play just four games at the pool stage, with
IN the years leading up to their PRO12 triumph in 2015, Glasgow had to learn the lessons of losing big games before they were finally able to lift the silverware. Edinburgh know they now have to do the same if they are to emulate their fellow Scots and win the trophy.
The Warriors lost three semi-finals in the four years up to 2013, then when they got to the final the following year they lost that too before eventually winning the competition the season after that. Edinburgh do not have quite the same record of gradually closing in on the title, but their progress in their three years under Richard Cockerill has seen them get to two quarter-finals – in the PRO14 and the Champions Cup, losing to Munster both times. As his squad look forward to Saturday’s semi-final a Tier One side playing two Tier Four teams home and away, and the same process happening between Tiers Two and Three. Clubs from the same league cannot meet in the pool stage.
After those four weekends of fixtures, the top four in each pool will qualify for the last eight. Clubs ranked five to eight in the pools will compete against Ulster, captain Stuart McInally is confident that, thanks to those two Munster matches, they are now well aware of what needs to be done in order to go one step further.
“If you look back on those two games against Munster, they were both decided on small moments,” the hooker said. “They were both one-score games.
“The main thing I learned was that those big games just come down to really small moments. And small moments that happen in other games – it could be a lost lineout or a scrum penalty – sometimes you get away with them and you can then make up for it later in the game, or there’s time to score another try.
“In a knockout game, against the big teams, you can’t afford that. When a team loses they’ll look back on one or two moments and they’ll say ‘well, that potentially cost us’. in the knockout stage of the Challenge Cup, which will begin with a single-pool format including the remaining 14 clubs from the three leagues – six from the French Top 14 and four each from the PRO14 and the English Premiership.
If they are in the top tier, Edinburgh could find themselves playing against the teams ranked either seventh or
“So that’s one thing I feel we’ve learned. That was something I was stressing to the boys: we just have to stay in the moment. Every single play could win you the game, so just making sure we’re focused for the full 80 minutes has been the key, and making sure we take our learnings from those games is massive.”
For Scottish players of the 30-year-old’s longevity and standing in the game, it can only be deeply frustrating to look at the roll of honour in both the PRO14 and Europe and see no representation for our teams other than that Warriors 2015 win. McInally knows just how much it would mean for rugby in this country if Edinburgh can get past Ulster and go through to meet either Munster or Leinster in the final.
“If we could get past this weekend and I lead the boys out in a final it would certainly be the pinnacle of my Edinburgh career. I don’t like getting too far ahead of myself. It would be massive. I’ve been at this club ten years and never really won anything. It would be nice to have a chance to really put our mark down on this competition, look back and say ‘we won the cup’. That’s our goal. We’re in the semi-finals now and not just here to make up the numbers. We’re going for it.
“Certainly for Scottish rugby it would be huge and it would be us achieving something we never have before at Edinburgh. That’s a big motivating factor for us and it would be a big confidence boost for us knowing we can compete in what has turned into a 15-game season and then into play-offs.”
Beating a team like Ulster has certainly proven pretty difficult for Edinburgh in recent years. In 2018-19 McInally’s team lost both at Murrayfield and in Belfast, and also lost the second game in the 201718 league campaign. McInally said: “I’ve played Ulster before and won. We read into our current form and our position in the league table. These games are one-off games.” eighth in England and France. Harlequins and Gloucester currently fill those places south of the Border, while Toulouse and Montpellier finished seventh and eighth in last season’s Top 14. As a Tier Three team, Glasgow could be drawn against either Racing and Toulon and Bristol or Wasps presuming those four all retain Tier Two status.