The Champions Cup is broken. That much is obvious now. There are too many hollow fixtures and walkovers. What was once the showpiece of European club rugby is a desperate, unwieldy, near-invisible mess.
How sad that it has come to this. If the powers-that-be, armed with hindsight, could rewind a dozen years or so, they might try harder to work together and preserve the old Heineken Cup, which was a cherished, high-class event.
Instead, petty squabbling led to an Anglo-French rebellion and set the wheels in motion for the endless upheaval which has led to where we are today, with the vandalised remains of a lost asset.
Yet another revamp is now needed. The current, inter-hemisphere format is a logistical nightmare and utter madness. It didn’t really need the weakened Sharks and Stormers to suffer half-century hidings against Leicester and Harlequins respectively to expose that inescapable truth.
Dan Biggar sounded the alarm in his…
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