Serendipity enhances Euro Cup’s Round of 16

UNINTENDED consequences? You can’t move for them in the Union game, whether the governing class is ring-fencing the Premiership or fiddling around with tackle heights.

And while such fallouts are often negative, it can cut both ways – as the embattled suits at the top end of the European Professional Club Rugby operation have just discovered over there in their tax-efficient corner of Switzerland.

After years of manipulating what used to be known as the Heineken Cup to protect the powerful from the powerful – seedings, rankings and all the rest of it – the fixture chaos generated by the pandemic has resulted in a Round of 16 that has every chance of being tastier than a slab of cellar-matured Gruyere, despite being run over two legs rather than as a straight knock-out.

You might well be tempted to stick a few bob on Leinster beating Connacht in one of the local derbies – let’s face it, you’d back the Dubliners to beat anyone right now – and with the balance of Parisian power tilting towards Racing 92, it will be an eyebrow-raiser if they fail to find a way past Stade Francais.

But as far as the other six contests are concerned, we are in Pinstickers’ Guide territory. Are you really willing to bet your house on Toulouse surviving a night in Belfast, even if they travel points up? Clermont-Leicester? Exeter-Munster? Pass the crystal ball and a box of Paracetamol.

The draw is the way it is only because Covid-19 had its wicked way with the tournament, leaving it prey to an element of pot luck.

If it was not a blind draw, it was a long way short of the 20/20 version that has allowed the heavyweights to plot their way through the entire competition for much of the last decade.

At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, what’s not to like?