Still one Italian team too many in Euro Cup
The Lions tour has somewhat overshadowed what is usually one of the highlights of the early part of the close season – the draws for the European cups.
If you’re one of the lucky ones whose team has made it into the Champions Cup, then you’re looking for a pool from which they might just qualify for the knock-out stages, and hoping to avoid a so-called ‘pool of death’.
However, if your team is in the Challenge Cup, aka the Losers’ Cup or the Mickey Mouse Cup, to give it but a few of its derogatory names, then you’re simply hoping that the draw gives you an excuse to go somewhere nice in midwinter.
In the big boys competition there’s still an Italian club, and their presence casts a shadow over things – draw them and you really should be in for ten points, but so will your two rivals. This time around Bath, Toulon and Scarlets are the lucky three who cop for playing Benetton Treviso.
By way of contrast, the defending Champions, Saracens, and the Clermont side they beat in the final, end up in a pool with the Ospreys and Northampton – that’s just isn’t it?
Sometime soon the clause that allows an Italian side automatic entry into the Champions Cup has to go – it devalues things. I reckon that in every Challenge Cup pool there are least two, and sometimes three or four sides that would see off Treviso with ease. The premier cup competition in Europe deserves to have the 20 best teams playing in it.
Looking at the other three pools there isn’t a soft option for any side, and that has to be good. Leicester, Munster and Racing will slug it out alongside Castres who are nobody’s mugs, and the English champions, Exeter, are rewarded with a pool that has Glasgow, Leinster and Montpellier – not easy! Wasps and Harlequins end up in the same pool, meaning they’ll meet at least four times next season, with Top 14 table toppers La Rochelle, and Ulster chucked in.
Of course, by the time of the final pool rounds, someone’s sure to be in trouble in either the Top14 or the Premiership, and that’s when lack of commitment starts to creep in, but at this stage who knows who that might be.
Of course, in the PRO12 there’s nowhere to be relegated to, so their provinces and regions will be able to maintain focus throughout the competition.
In the Challenge Cup there are a couple of poisilly, soned chalices, in two Siberian sides. Newcastle Falcons have Enisei-STM, while London Irish’s welcome back to the biggish time sees them pitted against Krasny Yar – if you think that Kingston Park can be chilly on a winter’s evening, Krasnoyarsk, from where both the Russian sides hail, is a different proposition, as it has got to -52.8C there in the past!
Since the foreign trips are the name of the game, what you don’t want is to be drawn against another British side, and looking at the pools, the luckiest club has to be Gloucester, as they play Agen and Pau, coupled with a fun trip to Parma where Zebre are based – that provides a serious opportunity to do some damage to Shedhead pockets and livers.
Maro Itoje and Kyle Sinckler came in for criticism after they celebrated the Lions being awarded a penalty in the closing stages of their defeat by the Blues. It’s a feature of Saracens’ game that they stage these celebrations every time something positive happens – it could be a turnover, a scrum penalty, a free kick, a new batch of biltong arriving.
They do it not only to celebrate their success, but to send a message to the opposition – look how together we are as a unit – and it is really just gamesmanship. Itoje’s team-mate, Jamie George, sprung to his defence, but something he said jarred. Apparently he has been coached from the age of 14 to take part in these artificial celebrations – it’s an act, stage-managed by the coaches.
I don’t like it, just as I don’t like players ironically patting an opponent on the head after he makes a mistake: if we’re going to have celebrations let’s make them spontaneous. How long before we have coaches calling the celebrations from the sidelines, and which will be the first Premiership side to add a ‘celebration coach’ to their roster, alongside attack, defence, scrum and kicking?