Champions Cup and Challenge Cup: How the rugby competitions work
The Champions Cup and Challenge Cup return this weekend with the final two weeks of group action.
The format is confusing and many still do not understand it, so here is our breakdown of the format and how the coming weeks can impact your team.
Champions Cup
The top European competition sees two groups of 12 battle it out to finish in the top eight.
Clubs play four group fixtures against teams based on where they finished in their domestic league last season.
After the four fixtures, the top eight teams in each group progress through to the round of 16 with the top four in each group having a home tie.
There is a caveat to this which is if a South African team finishes in the top four their round of 16 tie will still be played in Europe and not at home.
Beyond there, it’s a straight series of knockout matches until the final in Dublin later in the season.
Challenge Cup
There are 18 clubs in the Challenge Cup across two pools – one with 10 teams and one with eight teams.
The top six in each pool will go into a round of 16 phase alongside two teams from each of the Champions Cup pools who will drop down.
Thereafter the 16 sides will compete in a regular knockout system until there are two clubs remaining in the final.
Each round will be a singular leg, rather than double-headers.
Weekends of action
- Group round 3: 13-15 January
- Group round 4: 20-22 January
- Round of 16: 31 March to 2 April
- Quarter-finals: 7-9 April
- Semi-finals: 28-30 April
- Finals: 19-20 May