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Well we are tier 1 and therefore avoid Stade, Glos, Sale and Bourgoin in the group stage. Can't do linky thing but picked it up off Leeds site! Our A team should have a field day with some of the matches!

Quins Vs Stade - what a rematch!!

[www.leedscarnegie.com] here.

Link to the Leeds page

Leeds rugbynetwork

A trip back to Spain would be good!!!!!!

A trip to Bucharest would be good

Rugby Parma FC 1931, Aviron Bayonnais Rugby Pro, CR Cetransa El Salvador - wouldn't be too shabby a draw

The draw to decide the Pools for the tournament will take place in the ERC offices on Wednesday, 9th June and will then be communicated.
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For the purposes of draw the 20 qualified teams will be divided into four Tiers of five teams each, based on their European Tournament performances over the past four seasons. The teams from each Tier level will then be kept apart in the draw for the Pools.
AMLIN Challenge Cup 2010-11 Teams and Tiers:

TIER 1: Stade Français Paris, Gloucester Rugby, Sale Sharks, CS Bourgoin-Jallieu, Harlequins

TIER 2: Newcastle Falcons, CA Brive Corrèze Limousin, Connacht Rugby, SU Agen Lot-et-Garonne, Rugby Parma FC 1931

TIER 3: Leeds Carnegie, Montpellier Hérault Rugby, Aviron Bayonnais Rugby Pro, Petrarca Rugby, Femi CZ Rugby Rovigo

TIER 4: Atlantique Stade Rochelais, Consiag I Cavalieri Prato, Exeter Rugby Chiefs, Invite 1 – Bucuresti Oaks, Invite 2 – CR Cetransa El Salvador

AMLIN CHALLENGE CUP POOL DRAW FORMAT

Key Principles

• There are 20 participating clubs from six countries who will be drawn into five Pools of four teams each.

• For the purpose of the draw the 20 qualified and invited teams are ranked based on their ERC European Rankings and are divided into four Tiers of five. Rankings are based on European performance over the past four seasons in the Heineken Cup and the knock-out stages of the AMLIN Challenge Cup.

• Each Pool will have one team from each of the four Tier levels.

• No two teams from the same country will be drawn in the same Pool, except for the sixth and seventh clubs from France (based on European Ranking) who will be drawn into Pools with another French team and the sixth club from England (also based on European Ranking) who will also be drawn into a Pool with another England team.

Draw Format

• The draw will have four stages starting with the allocation of five teams from Tier 1 and then moving to the next Tier.

• During each Tier allocation a team will be drawn and then a Pool number for that team will be drawn from the available Pool options.

• Allocation of Tier 1 – All five top Tier teams will be drawn into the five Pool spots available.

• Allocation of Tier 2, 3 and 4 – For each Tier allocation the teams will be drawn starting with the teams from the country with the highest number of teams participating in the tournament.

Therefore the order of allocation in each Tier will be teams from France, England, Italy and, Ireland.

The invited teams from Romania and Spain are in the bottom Tier and will be drawn last.

• To avoid having two teams from the same country in the same Pool, teams may be required to be allocated to available Pool spots automatically during the course of the Draw.

• As there are seven clubs from France and five Pools, in Tier 3 and 4 one of the three French clubs in those Tiers will be drawn into Pools not yet containing French teams. The remaining French teams will then be drawn into the available Pools.

• As there are six clubs from England and five Pools, in Tier 4 the one remaining English club will be drawn into the available Pools, which will contain one other English club.

Overall European Rankings are available on www.ercrugby.com/europeanrankings

Well it's nice to be in the top tier for something... even if it is this.

No disrespect to Exeter but I hope we don't get them in our pool. Rather have a foreign trip!

SW France please!!!!

Toulouse was great.......

I suspect I can justify an away trip to any of the warmer destinations...

Any one know the time of the draw today?

Also is there a video link? I could not see any info on the ERC site.

I did see that Wales are offering the ERC to have the Amlin Final in Cardiff the night before the HC final.

Apparently the draw started 10 minutes ago!

Quote:

Samquin
Any one know the time of the draw today?
Also is there a video link? I could not see any info on the ERC site.

11:00 I believe but the live link failed miserably yesterday in true ERC style and it took over an hour to get a press release out on their website...

GQG.

My impatience got the better of me and I've just spoken to the ERC. They intend to announce the results of the draw on their website this afternoon.

ERC are so poor at communicating information. I noticed last season the fixtures and tables were slow to be updated.

Lets hope we got a good draw.

Just merged the threads - the ERC always seem to take an age to get the info out, especially with the lower level competition

I'm really hoping for Bucuresti.

RESPECT THE REF - NO REF, NO GAME!

I'd love to go back to Valladollid again, that was a fun trip last time

Info is embargoed until 2pm, I'll post it up as soon as I hear anything

I always get suspicious when there is an embargo on the release of information. It's not what you would expect in this day and age. (Apart from the RFU/ERC)

Only half hour to wait...............

Interesting re. the 2pm embargo: it's already on Sale's Twitter feed that Sharks have been drawn with Brive, Petrarca and Cetransa El Salvador.

Think they pulled it from here

[www.ercrugby.com]

only show one of your guys fixtures at the moment

So taking that information we can still draw



TIER 2: Connacht Rugby, SU Agen Lot-et-Garonne, Rugby Parma FC 1931

TIER 3: Montpellier Hérault Rugby, Aviron Bayonnais Rugby Pro, Femi CZ Rugby Rovigo

TIER 4: Atlantique Stade Rochelais, Consiag I Cavalieri Prato, Exeter Rugby Chiefs, Bucuresti Oaks

I think Sale mucked up there

It's Connacht, Bayonne and Cavalieri Prato... nowhere particularly exotic.

But in the time honoured tradition, we should have enough to see this lot off...

Pos
Team
Pl
W
D
L
Try F
Try A
Try Diff
F
A
Pts Diff
TB
LB
Pts

1 Bayonne 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2 Cavalieri Prato 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 Connacht Rugby 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 Harlequins 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0


?

QUIN KONG

Who jumped the gun with the announcement?!

They were updating the site pool tables in real time for all to see

Florence is rather nice though, seems pretty exotic to me.

Galway is always fun

Bayonne is near Biaritz and Prato near Florence so a couple of potenntially very nice away trips theres.

Quote:

barquin mad
Galway is always fun

...and Max gets a lie-in!

Well we should have more than enough to see this lot off but I can't say I am too excited about it.

I suspect the season is going to have periods of very low intensity (compared to those teams involved in the Heineken Cup) and there is really no excuse next season for a major improvement in the GP form especially away from home.

Bayonne and Connacht won't be that easy

Agreed - Bayonne away is rather mouth watering however, it will be a bit of a bear pit (hope it is not a friday night game as a long weekend would be rather nice - hopefully with the correct result)

Connacht have improved since the last time we played in Cathair na Gaillimhe.

Makes the 13th August away friendly against Connacht interesting!

Nunquam Dormio

Quote:

Connacht have improved since the last time we played in Cathair na Gaillimhe.

Are you sure about that?

BB

They had a good Amlin cup run but finished last in the Magners...

and got one or two into the Ireland side.

Try,Try and Try again....!