A look at this seasons European Challenge Cup

The Holy Grail..

By JMF
October 19 2006

With the ECC fixtures now announced we look at the background to this seasons Group and what it means for Connacht for this campaign.

This is a short introductory article on the European Challenge Cup for 2006/7.

1. Qualifiers

The following teams qualified for the 2006/7 competition. These are listed by country and in order of league finish in the 2005/6 season

FRANCE (7)

Clermont

Brive

Narbonne

Montpellier

Bayonne

Montauban *

Albi *

ENGLAND (6)

Newcastle Falcons

Worcester

Bath

Saracens

Bristol

Harlequins *

ITALY (3)

GRAN Parma

Viadana

Petrarca Padova

WALES (1)

Dragons

IRELAND (1)

Connacht

SCOTLAND (1)

Glasgow

ROMANIA (1)

Bucuresti

* Note that Montauban and Albi are newly promoted to the Top14 and that Harlequins are newly promoted to the Guinness Premiership.

2. The Draw

I expect that the draw was carried out in a manner similar to that used for the Heineken Cup:

Step 1 Selection of seeded teams

England's Number 1 team (Newcastle Falcons) were seeded as the 2005/6 ECC winners (Gloucester) came from England. A draw of the number 1 teams from France, Italy, Ireland, Scotland and Wales decided the other 4 seeds. These were Clermont (France), Connacht (Ireland), Glasgow (Scotland) and Dragons (Wales).

Step 2 Five seeded teams put in 5 separate pools

Step 3 Four French teams drawn into 4 separate Pools (teams ranked 2 to 5) i.e. not in the pool already containing the French seed

Step 4 Four English teams drawn into 4 separate Pools (teams ranked 2 to 5) i.e. not in the pool already containing the English seed

Step 5 Three Italian and one Romanian team were drawn into 4 separate Pools

Step 6 At this point, each pool had one English and one French team; two pools were complete and three pools needed one more team; three teams remained to be allocated (Montauban, Albi and Harlequins) so these teams would inevitably be drawn against another team from their own country.

Here are the pools, with the ranking of each team by country. This order is as given by ERC and tallies with my guess of how the draw was carried out.

POOL 1

WAL 1 Dragons

FRA 5 Bayonne

ENG 5 Bristol

ROM 1 Bucuresti

POOL 2

SCO 1 Glasgow

FRA 3 Narbonne

ENG 4 Saracens

ITA 1 GRAN Parma

POOL 3

ENG 1 Newcastle Falcons

FRA 2 Brive

ITA 3 Petrarca Padova

FRA 6 Montauban

POOL 4

IRE 1 Connacht

FRA 4 Montpellier

ENG 3 Bath

ENG 6 Harlequins

POOL 5

FRA 1 Clermont

ENG 2 Worcester

ITA 2 Viadana

FRA 7 Albi

3. The Pool Stages

The format for the Pool stages of the tournaments is unchanged from the 2005/06 season. Each team in the pool will play the other three teams home and away (total of six games).

Round 1 will be played 20/21/22 Oct

Round 2 will be played 27/28/29 Oct

Round 3 will be played 8/9/10 Dec

Round 4 will be played 15/16/17 Dec

Round 5 will be played 12/13/14 Jan

Round 6 will be played 19/20/21 Jan

The now-usual match points system will apply: four points for a win, two points for a draw, a bonus point for scoring four or more tries and a bonus point for a team losing by seven or less points.

The ranking of teams in a pool will follow the following criteria:

1. By the number of Match points

2. If two teams are equal on points then they will look at the two matches played between them, higher ranking will go to the team

(a) which has earned the most match points from the two matches

(b) which has scored the most tries in the two matches

3. If still unresolved, ranking will be based on:

(a) the number of tries scored in all Pool matches

(b) aggregate points difference from all Pool matches

(d) toss of a coin

4. The Knockout Stages

The knockout stages are all single leg matches, so home advantage will have a large bearing.

Quarter-Finals will be played 30/31 Mar, 1 Apr

Semi-Finals will be played 20/21/22 Apr

The Final will be played 18/19/20 May

The five Pool winners and three best placed runners-up will qualify for the Quarter-Finals. The Pool winners will be ranked 1 - 5 and the runners-up will be ranked 6, 7 and 8. Teams ranked 1 - 4 will have home advantage and the Quarter-Finals will be:

Team 1 v Team 8 (Match A)

Team 2 v Team 7 (Match B)

Team 3 v Team 6 (Match C)

Team 4 v Team 5 (Match D)

The ranking will have similar criteria to that used to sort out the ranking in the pool stage:

1. The Pool winner will be the Club with the highest number of match points earned in each Pool

2. The runners-up will be the three 2nd place teams from all five Pools with the next highest number of points (note: no 3rd place team will qualify).

3. If unresolved (by match points), ranking will be based on:

(a) the number of tries scored in all Pool matches

(b) aggregate points difference from all Pool matches

(d) toss of a coin

The winner of the Quarter-Final Match A will play the winner of Match D at the home venue of the winner of Match A.

The winner of the Quarter-Final Match B will play the winner of Match C at the home venue of the winner of Match B.

If there is a tie at full-time in the Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals or Final, extra time of 20 minutes (10 minutes each way) will be played. If this does not produce a result, then the winner will be the team that has scored the most tries in the match (including extra time). Failing that, a place-kick competition will be used to determine the winner.

5. Conclusion

It is very important to win your pool: teams that top their Pool are guaranteed qualification and will most probably get a home fixture. Runners-up will face a tricky away fixture. Better than that, the two teams that do best in the pool stages will, potentially, have home advantage in the Quarter-Finals and in the Semi-Finals.