JOE’s European Champions Cup Preview: Pool 4

In our penultimate preview of the inaugural Rugby Champions Cup we take a look at Pool 4 which is very light on Irish representation.

Indeed there are just two Irish personnel between the four clubs, former Munster players Peter Stringer and James Downey who ply their trades at Bath and Glasgow Warriors respectively. This is quite an even group with French sides Montpellier and Toulouse in amongst English side Bath and the Scottish Glasgow. Toulouse are four time winners of the old Heineken Cup but have been on the wane somewhat in recent years, while Glasgow have been threatening to win the Pro12 for the past couple of seasons while just coming up short. Montpellier and Bath will also have a big say in how this group plays out…

Top Dog. . .

This is the hardest choice we have had to make this week and with absolutely no certainty whatsoever, we are going with historical heavyweights Toulouse. To us, there is no stand-out team in this group and they are all evenly matched. Toulouse are a team in decline but their performance to beat Toulon last weekend has swayed our opinion that they may just be the top dog in the pool. Glasgow and Bath are not far behind with the English side putting together some excellent performances in the Aviva Premiership including a big win over Leicester. George Ford at 10 is fantastic and he pulled the strings for them so far this season and all last season. A quality runner and kicker, he will be the starting 10 for England in the near future. Also keep an eye out for Kyle Eastmond who we think will come of age in centre this year.

Whipping boys. . .

Rather against our will, we are picking Montpellier as the whipping boys of this group. Before you all scream in anger, here out our reasons. The French side have never been overly interested in European rugby and prefer to concentrate their efforts on their domestic league. Now, Montpellier are by no means a poor team and they do in fact have some world class players in the form of Ben Mowen, Francois Trinh-Duc and Rene Ranger. Simply because we think they may give up if they lose a game, we think they will finish bottom of the group.

Schmidt’s about to get real. . .

This is where we look at which Irish players need to impress to be sure of their spot on the roster for next year’s Rugby World Cup? Peter Stringer is our choice… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hgnYBXMGg0 Video via Ste Caswells Channel. We know this is a stretch but the Irish players are pretty thin on the ground in this pool so we are going for the diminutive former Munster man. Realistically he isn’t going to get a call but we can always dream of a fairy-tale return for the ‘child’. Who knows, maybe he could make a repeat of this try in the World Cup final and help us see off the challenge of Venezuela?

The 'Conor Murray come from nowhere to get the Irish number nine shirt at the World Cup in New Zealand in 2011 candidate for the most likely unknown player or player with little international experience to make the World Cup squad for England 2014'. . .

The most likely World Cup bolter at this stage is Trevor Brennan who we are betting will make a surprise return to the Toulouse team and storm back into the Irish panel for the World Cup next year… God knows we could do with his toughness in the back-row with all these injuries.

Player most likely to have their own Parody Twitter account. . .

Gavin Henson for bath without a shadow of a doubt… Probably be simply called Gavin Henson and the description would be “I'm an idiot”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXzzSa6HFmU Video via musalevi.