THE new format for the Heineken Champions Cup pool stage may have taken away much of the element of surprise from the draw, but Glasgow and Edinburgh will still be eagerly awaiting news of their opponents from today’s ceremony in Lausanne.
There is a convoluted arrangement which sees the 24 competing clubs split into four tiers or seeding groups, then divided into two pools of 12 to determine who faces whom in the pool. What it boils down to, though, is that the Warriors, who are in the fourth and bottom tier, will play home and away against two opponents from the top tier - one English and one French, as teams from the same league cannot meet each other at this stage. That means that Danny Wilson’s side will face either Exeter Chiefs or Wasps from the Premiership and either Bordeaux-Begles or Lyon from the Top 14.
Edinburgh are in the second tier of teams by virtue of having reached the PRO14 play-off semi-finals, and will meet opponents from tier three: either Sale Sharks or Harlequins, and either La Rochelle or Clermont Auvergne. Dates and kick-off times for the fixtures will be finalised next week, although it is already known that the first two rounds of pool games will take place on the weekends of 12 and 19 December, with the following two on the weekends of 16 and 23 January.
After the four rounds of pool games have been played, the four highest-ranked clubs in each of the two pools will go through to the quarter-finals. The clubs ranked fifth to eighth in each will drop down into the knockout stages of the Challenge Cup, the draw for which also takes place today.
Maxime Mbanda, the Zebre and Italy flanker, has won the 2020 PRO14 Chairman’s Award in recognition of his work during the pandemic as a volunteer ambulance worker. The 27-year-old worked more than 70 days with the Yellow Cross emergency service in the Emilia Romagna area, driving critically ill patients to hospital.
“The courage and commitment displayed by Maxime at a time when the world was heading into the face of the pandemic is truly incredible,” said PRO14 chairman Dominic McKay, who is also the SRU’s chief operating officer. Mbanda responded by thanking those who chose him for the award, but insisted he did not deserve it as he had been only one of many rugby players who had done similar work this year.
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