CHANGING LANDSCAPES

With Ulster having an off week, I find myself thinking upon the changing landscape of European rugby.

Take, as a case in point, this season’s European finals. Both are Anglo-French affairs as Harlequins and Montpellier meet in the Challenge Cup final before Saracens meet Racing 92 in the showpiece that is the Champions’ Cup final. Should we deny those four their places in their respective finals then we would be fools as they have been the top four sides.

Where is the PRO12 representation? Somewhat ironically it was Connacht and the Dragons who proved our biggest challengers for European glory in the Challenge Cup and both have fallen at previous hurdles, while in the Champions’ Cup it was Ulster who came closest to reaching the last eight, pipped on tries scored for one of the best runner-up spots.

Instead we have reached the stage where only two PRO12 sides made it out of their pools in either competition and none made it to finals weekend in Lyon. With a severe deficit in spending between the PRO12 and the other two leagues, as well as caps on foreign imports placed on the provinces by the IRFU, it is simply a sad confirmation of a fact we already knew – the PRO12 sides cannot compete.

How are the Celtic sides meant to put up opposition to the star studded Racing 92 team?

At the weekend we saw Racing’s Springbok international centre Johannes Goosen helped off the pitch near the end of their game with Leicester. For most teams this would be a major blow, but who was his replacement? France international fly-half Remi Tales. How are we supposed to compete with that depth when we can only sign four players of that quality from abroad?

When all the teams in the competition aren’t operating on a level playing field then it’s easy to see where there will be problems. Unless a PRO12 team gets a rather fortuitous pool draw then they can kiss a knock-out place goodbye and can turn their focus back to domestic matters – something every PRO12 team in the Champions’ Cup had to do this year.

And not only are the teams different but the attendances are dwindling too.

Over the weekend we saw only 38,000 fans attend the two games combined. For the two semi-finals of the northern hemisphere’s supposedly elite competition. That is dreadful.

It’s a figure that sounds even worse when you consider that 45,000 fans descended on the AVIVA Stadium in 2012 to see Ulster defeat Edinburgh, and when you combine it with the other semi-final that weekend (Clermont vs Leinster in Bordeaux) it gives you a total attendance of 78,000 – more than double what was pulled in at the weekend.

You could put it down to the fact that the games were played at stadia with smaller capacities (24,000 for the Madejski Stadium and 30,500 for the City Ground) except for the fact that neither stadium was even close to being filled. In fact, it’s probably better the EPCR elected to play the games at smaller stadia – imagine how bad it would have looked on TV had the two games been played at Twickenham like they would have been done in the past.

The European Cup is dying a slow death.

EPCR cannot afford to have such shocking attendance figures in their semi-finals for another season otherwise they might have a few angry TV companies banging on their door wondering where the packed out stadia they’re supposed to be broadcasting have disappeared to. Not only that but the revenue they’ll be missing out on will be substantial too, even if they have increased ticket prices for the games.

Once the highest club competition in European (and possibly even world) rugby, the Champions’ Cup now represents the gulf in class between the PRO12 and its competitors. If the IRFU want the provinces to be competitive again then they have to look at amending their non-Irish qualified quota because none of the provinces, on current strength, will be returning to dine at the top table of Europe any time soon with their squad limits.

Instead, we’ll continue to watch the English and French take all the spoils for years to come.