David Kelly: 'Changing attitudes, rather than format, is best way to widen Champions Cup net'

As the fellah once said, we’ve never been big on predictions around here and we never will be.

Nevertheless, in Europe’s Heineken Champions Cup, a sense of inevitability is threatening to cannibalise the competition which this year celebrates its 25th season.

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Looking back, it is almost quaint to recall the birth of an event which the Irish approached with so much ambiguity that they almost entered some club sides instead of their provinces.

Even then, the initial diffidence, allied to the still latent amateurism to which so many in this country were firmly wedded, meant there was little initial interest in Ireland.

Ulster’s breakthrough win in Lansdowne Road, nearly as politically and socially significant as much as anything else, lit the blue touch paper for their Irish colleagues, even if their win was asterisked by the first signs of English resistance as they boycotted that year’s event.

As the northerners retreated into increasing irrelevance in Europe, Munster, then Leinster, supplanted them and the Heineken Cup, bolstered by free-to-air coverage and the general growth spurt of the pro game in Ireland, soared in popularity.

Like professionalism itself, with which it shares a birthday, the European Cup has experienced multiple growing pains; it still does.

Seven of the clubs who featured in the early years would become extinct; this would accelerate into double figures at the start of this century as proud Scottish, Italian and Welsh clubs folded, re-modelled or re-classified.

Still, although several dynasties – Leicester, Munster, Toulouse – threatened to form a hegemony, there remained enough variety in the early years to represent a true sense of competitiveness; there were seven different names on the trophy in the first eight seasons.

In the last eight seasons, there have been just three different winners – each parading a dominance that was not as widely celebrated in the last decade as the diversity that was enjoyed in the early days.

Sepia-tinted nostalgia naturally infers a sense that the past was more enjoyable than the present.

For example, in the Champions League 25 years ago, no British side made the knock-outs and the quarter-finals featured a remarkable egalitarian selection from eight different countries; UEFA would swiftly remove the possibility of such a quaint notion from ever being repeated.

And, while the standards have never been higher in that competition, until last year’s line-up the cast of teams reaching the final stages were as predictable as the almost endless series of group games.

Its less popular and glamorous oval ball cousin is threatening to go the same way but for different reasons; the obvious one being that there are less teams of a sufficient quality to challenge for major honours.

Advancing professionalism, as we have seen in other sports and even in a GAA context, has not necessarily widened the net.

Rather, it has been concertinaed; the wretched Welsh, inept Italians and shambolic Scots have collectively failed to land any blows as Toulon, Saracens and Leinster carved up the last decade between them.

Add in the decline of proud names like Leicester Tigers and Wasps, and the difficulties faced by consistent challengers like Munster, Exeter or Racing 92 to break the glass ceiling, all of which means that the status quo is unlikely to be changed.

This is recognised privately within corridors of power throughout Europe; in England and France, where domestic glories and revenues trump anything the continent has to offer, and in Celtic countries too, soon to receive their own mammoth cash injection which may yet resuscitate the PRO 14, if not establish a different league altogether.

Europe’s response has typically been to shake itself up and there are whispers they may do so again, with talk of three-team groups, a reduction in qualifiers and two-legged knock-out games. Yet again, the administrators will be missing the point.

As has remained the case since the reduction of qualifiers from 24 to 20, ostensibly for meritocratic reasons, the main obstacles to a truly democratic spread of contenders has been widespread indifference.

Any cosmetic changes to how the competition is run will not alter this state of affairs unless more clubs take Europe seriously – and right now, not enough are doing so.

“It devalues the competition if you continue to tinker with it,” says Neil McIlroy, manager of Clermont, a rarity amongst French and English sides in that they always take Europe seriously.

“It does look like there will be the same old faces in the quarter-finals this season again, and once more some of the English and French teams are simply not turning up.

“But there is a reasonable freshness about the groups every year and if you keep reducing the numbers that will disappear.”

And the more they try to change things, the more they will stay the same.

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