’Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even the latest Omicron variant. And with infection rates on the rise in many parts of the continent, who would currently opt to be a cross-border tournament organiser? European rugby union’s bleak Covid midwinter is already showing signs of being a depressingly long one.
It is a deepening hole at a time of year when players and supporters are supposed to be building towards the start of thein early February. Vaccines or no vaccines, will it be possible to stage the tournament in front of capacity crowds? Will mass cross-border travel be permitted or sensible? Nor have we even mentioned the possibility of inclement wintry weather, not exactly unknown when Scotland host England, as they will do in February’s opening round.
Midweek games are also a non-starter on player welfare grounds, which leaves just the round of 16 home and away weekends pencilled in for April. Could you ditch those, move any postponed December and January fixtures to the now vacant dates and then send only the top four from each pool through to the quarters? Fine in theory, less so if you happen to be one of the clubs forced to field an under-strength side in the early games.
Last season was arguably even more of an oddity, with Sale managing to qualify for the last 16 despite losing both the pool games in which they played. And yet, by the end of the season, with Toulouse beating La Rochelle in a highly-competitive final at Twickenham, many of the whys and wherefores had melted away. As the Scarlets chairman, Simon Muderack, rightly put it the other day: “We love sport because at the end of the game we know who has won, lost or drawn.