Pro 12 European Cup qualification: storm in a teacup? Written by @AMP_Rugby

English and French sides, well more precisely, Leicester Tigers, Toulouse and London Wasps used to dominate the Heineken Cup (HCup). Johnson, Pelous and Dallaglio used to almost take turns at lifting the trophy. Add Northampton's win in 2000 and from 2000-2007 English and French clubs won 7 of the first 8 HCups in the noughties. But in recent years the Irish provinces have created a dynasty of their own, with Leinster and Munster victorious in 5 out of the last 7 instalments of European rugby's show piece event, clearly to the annoyance of the Top 14 and Aviva Premiership (AP) administrators. This has led to England and France serving notice to withdraw their clubs from ERC competitions from the 2014-2015 season. They are pushing for only the top six (Rabo Direct) Pro 12 (formerly Celtic League) teams to be guaranteed places in the HCup, instead of having 10 automatic places. In theory, they argue, teams would be less likely to rest players in Pro 12 matches in the run up to European ties, which should make HCup matches more fair. Money, in terms of the revenue redistributed from ERC competitions and feeding back to English and French clubs, is undoubtedly the real reason for the threatened withdrawal. The Pro 12 teams receive a disproportionately high return of funding from the ERC whereas the Top 14 and AP revenues are split between their 14 and 12 teams, respectively, so each receives far less than the Irish teams. But, for the purpose of my first blog, let's focus on the proposed Anglo French so called merit based changes to the qualification format, pretend their desired changes will be implemented and look at how this would have affected previous editions of the HCup.

If we analyse the final stages of the HCup from 2006 – 2012 looking at the Pro 12 clubs to make the semi-finals and the Pro 12 league standings from 2005 – 2012, all of the Pro 12 HCup semi-finalists from 2006 – 2011 HAD finished in the Top 6 of the Pro 12, in the previous season. In the 2011-2012 HCup, however, Edinburgh would be the first, well ONLY (out of 12 Pro 12 HCup semi-finalists), team to fall foul of the Anglo French system. They became the first Scottish side to make the HCup semi-finals, which included a terrific quarter final win over four times winners Toulouse, yet they had finished 8th in the 2010-11 Pro 12.

Under the "new" qualification rules would these semi-finalists also have qualified for the following year's event? Similar results are produced:

2006: Leinster and Munster both finished in the Top 6.

2007: Llanelli Scarlets finished 4th.

2008: Munster finished 3rd.

2009: Leinster and Cardiff both finished in the top 6.

2010: Leinster and Munster both finished in the Top 6.

2011: Leinster finished 2nd in the Pro 12.

2012: Leinster and Ulster finished in the Top 6 but Edinburgh finished 11th.

Poor old Edinburgh - the only club seemingly bearing the brunt of the "new" Anglo French qualification system, if we backdate it.

There's no need to check if English and French teams qualified for the HCup. But were AP and Top 14 HCup semi-finalists able to secure qualification for the following year's tournament?

For the Premiership four from eight did not:

- 1997-98 HCup champions Bath made the semi-finals in 2005-06 but failed to qualify for the next season's event.

- Northampton made the semi-finals of the 2006-07 HCup but were relegated from the Premiership in the same season!

- London Irish (who only qualified because of Wasps' tournament win in 2006-07) and Saracens were also semi-finalists in 2007-08 but finished 7^th and 8^th in the Premiership respectively and failed to qualify for the 2008-09 HCup.

For the Top 14:

- 2010-11 semi-finalists Perpignan finished 8^th in the Top 14, failing to qualify for next season’s event.
- (Biarritz were losing finalists in 2009-10 and only secured HCup qualification by making the final, as they only finished 7th in the Top 14 that year (their opponents Toulouse had already secured qualification after finishing 4^th in the Top 14). Under the Anglo French qualification rules Biarritz would also have qualified as the remaining two qualification places are for the winners of the HCup and Amlin Challenge Cup).

Would Bath, Northampton, Saracens or Perpignan have won the HCup in those years if they had not been fighting to qualify for the same competition the following season? Very unlikely. And why between 2006 and 2012, Leicester (twice) and Biarritz (once), did both make the HCup finals the same year they won their domestic league title? In one of those seasons (2006-07) Leicester also won the Anglo Welsh Cup. Clearly fighting battles on two, or three, fronts is not such an issue for AP or Top 14 sides.

The above analysis does ignore performances of teams earlier in the tournament and Pro 12 teams obviously did not have the same pressure of having to qualify for HCups so we will never know how a change to the qualifying rules would actually have affected their HCup performances. But it is also impossible to believe that Leinster or Munster would not have won HCup finals in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012, with this added burden. In practice nothing would have changed - if you need more proof, just look at the league placing each province secured in the year they won the HCup:

2006: Munster finished 3rd.

2008: Munster finished 3rd.

2009: Leinster finished 3rd.

2011: Leinster finished 2nd.

2012: Leinster finished top but lost the play off final to the Ospreys.

Munster and Leinster simply became experts at winning the big European matches, just as Leicester, Toulouse and Wasps had learned in earlier editions of the HCup. A generation of players from across the Irish sea have replaced Johnson, Dallaglio and Pelous in becoming club European greats - in O'Connell, O'Callaghan, O'Gara, O'Driscoll, Heaslip and Kearney et al, the best club European players of a generation hail from Ireland (you can probably add Thierry Dusautoir to that list but who else from France / England?). The two provinces have also recruited excellent foreign players to complement their outstanding home grown talent - Elsom, Nacewa, Howlett and Mafi to name a few. The same is currently in practice at Ulster with Pienaar, Afoa and Muller joining Ferris, Best and Trimble in helping them to reach the 2012 HCup final. The foundations of the earlier success of French and English sides were built on solid home grown talent, just like this current generation of Irish players. The English players at Leicester and Wasps in particular were better than any group of English players currently playing in any AP squad.

Is relegation a more important issue than qualification requirements? The Top 14 and AP need, and are fortunate in my view to have, relegation. France and England have enough clubs for two professional leagues and a series of lower divisions with evolving teams that strive to be in these professional leagues. Imagine a Pro 12 with relegation? The loss of TV and sponsorship revenue from not being in top flight rugby would have disastrous consequences for its clubs, let alone them having to worry about performances in that year's HCup. In the example of Edinburgh earlier, would they really have put as much effort into Europe with the risk of being relegated from the Pro 12? Northampton did and look what happened to them in 2007, although you could argue they are a better club for this experience (so are Harlequins). But look at the examples of Bristol and Bourgoin, both of whom played in the HCup in recent years but are a life time away from competing in it again (Bourgoin have been relegated twice). The Pro 12 will never have relegation - does this therefore mean that qualification for Europe's elite Rugby competition will be never be entirely merit based, as so desired by England and France?

The centralisation of the best local talent in the provinces or regions will continue to work against France and England teams, regardless of changes to the qualification system. How the Ospreys, four times winners of the Pro 12 (more than both Munster and Leinster), have never even made an HCup final is beyond me and the performance of the Welsh regions in the HCup in general is a separate discussion altogether. Due to a self-imposed salary cap, which is lower than the level in France, England and Ireland, and the loss of key talent to France it will be even harder Welsh region to win the nation's first HCup. Munster's success in Europe is beginning to dwindle due to retirements (David Wallace, Jerry Flannery and John Hayes) but English and French clubs need to produce new groups of winners that are concentrated at few of their clubs. Harlequins are possibly on the verge of producing something special, through their home grown talent and in Nick Evans they have the best fly half in European rugby (apologies Mr Sexton) but like the Ospreys have never even played in an HCup semi-final...

A compromise is sure to be reached between all ERC stakeholders at a meeting in Dublin this week and it is unlikely that the top 6 teams from the Pro 12 will qualify for a revised HCup (thanks for wasting my time looking into this issue!!). Judging by the above simple findings it would not guarantee English and French success and as stated earlier the real reason for their threat to leave European competitions is to do with money - the AP's huge TV deal with BT Vision emphasises this point.  As a final thought though, it would be very bad news for rugby in Europe if a future scenario where no Italian or Scottish teams, for example, qualified for a revised top tier European competition. At a time when Georgia and Russia, and other European countries, are vastly improving, it would be a giant leap backwards if the discussions do not safeguard the participation, every year, of teams from each of the Six Nations countries.