The opening weekend of the Champions Cup is one of the highlights of the rugby calendar, and these opening rounds are absolutely crucial if anyone is to break France’s stranglehold on the trophy.
Some people would have you believe that the pool stage is less important or meaningful nowadays, given that the odd team tends to slip away with just one win, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
While in Champions League football the knockout stages are played on home and away grounds, and Paris Saint-Germain have won the title in the last few seasons, despite actually winning only half of their group games, it is much harder to do in the Champions Cup.
The eventual winners have gone through the entire pool stage unbeaten in every campaign since the format changed in 2020 and that’s really all that significant considering it ensures home or home country advantage on big one-off occasions.
It’s hard to look past the usual suspects Bordeaux and Toulouse from the first 14, Northampton and Bath from PREM and Leinster and Glasgow from URC in terms of likely winners, but I support Stormers have a big year.
They have never made it past the quarter-finals but had the best away record in the URC last season and the arrival of Siya Kolisi, Cheslin Kolbe and Wilco Louw could only help a little when it comes to the big games.
It may not sound like a big call to predict that a squad full of Springboks and World Cup winners could have a successful stay, but this is South Africa’s fifth season in the competition and none of their sides have made it past the semi-finals.
Everyone knows the challenges they face, but the discussion about their inclusion will continue to grow if that record continues and I think John Dobson’s men could have a bit between their teeth to set a few records.
It’s still ridiculously difficult for teams outside of those two big teams from each domestic league to compete on two fronts and sides like Leicester, Gloucester and Pau, to name a few, will look at tough schedules on paper and be happy just to get through to the knockout stages despite looking pretty strong at the moment.
Saracens are another team I think could make a big splash, despite not making the semi-finals since before the salary cap scandal and missing the PREM play-offs in the last two campaigns.
They may struggle on their January trip to the Stade Ernest Wallon, but I can see them winning their other three outings in the pool and the likes of Jamie George, Owen Farrell, Maro Itoje and others will still fancy their chances in a tough winner-takes-all clash in the spring.
We’ve spent nearly a decade talking about Leinster’s quest for a fifth star and they’ve been runners-up in four of the last five seasons, but it seems they’re a bit under the radar this time around.
That’s probably just down to a poor start at home and their inability to win the big dance, but they’ll almost certainly be in the mix come May when we get down to the final four and Glasgow look a good bet to get into that late stage for the first time.
Adjustments made to introduce the bonus points system from Top 14 and awarding only the top three teams in each group to the qualifiers, the last four places in the knockout stage going to the teams with the most points, regardless of which group they are in, should make it even more competitive.
And then there is the small matter of the World Cup at the end of this season, which is certainly relevant from a player’s perspective because games in this competition, especially at the business end, are the best opportunity to prove yourself outside of the international arena.
Let’s face it, it’s sometimes difficult to get a run of games for your national team regardless of your domestic form, but I’m sure the performances of Henry Pollock, Alex Mitchell and Finn Smith against Leinster and Bordeaux helped get them selected for 2025. Lions tour.
From an English perspective, in particular, anyone who stars in a PREM team going deep into this competition, Steve Borthwick will be hard to ignore when it comes to selection for next summer’s World Cup warm-ups.
However, it is very important because lifting this trophy will go down among the highlights and best memories of any player’s career, whether you ask an old man like me or someone like Jamie George, who has won over 100 caps for his country.
Even for the French boys who have dominated this competition for the past six years and for whom the Top 14 is huge, some of the celebrations they enjoyed after lifting the Champions Cup will remain what they will remember most when they look back on their careers.
I bet even someone as decorated as Kolisi or Kolbe would want a taste of that action, and the Stormers’ trip to Stade Chaban-Delmas in Round 2 looks draining, but I can see them winning their other three games to earn a decent enough seed.
Securing home advantage deep into the knockout stages is as important as we saw with Toulouse last season when they lost to Glasgow and Saracens in the pool stage, which meant they had to travel to Bordeaux in the quarter-finals.
So it might seem that an extended knockout stage means less important pool games, but the evidence is to the contrary and if you want to lift the silverware in May, you really need to be ready to go.
Keep an eye on the Stormers and back-to-back winners Bordeaux, of course, but I can’t see anyone touching Antoine Dupont, Romain Ntamack, Jack Willis et al in these first four rounds, with Toulouse my pick to do it for a glorious seven titles in Lyon at the end of May.