Stephen Ferris: Leicester and Bordeaux lively outsiders for Champions Cup glory
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Lambrokes ambassador Stephen Ferris talks exclusively about the weekend action which sees the Heineken Champions Cup get under way on Friday night.
The pool stages for the Heineken’s Champions Cup kick off this weekend. A new campaign of European club rugby will begin on Friday 10th December with Northampton taking on Racing 92.
The Heineken Champions Cup will once again involve 24 elite clubs in two pools of 12, with eight representatives from each of Europe’s leading professional leagues.
The eight highest-ranked clubs from each pool will qualify for the knockout stage which will operate on a home and away basis from the round of 16, quarter-finals and semi-finals, with the final in Marseille on 28 May 2022.
There is no doubt who the favourites are for this year’s competition. The reigning champions Toulouse have now won the competition a record five times, and with them sitting pretty in second place in the Top 14 with nine wins out of 12, they are a team that oozes class and consistency. They begin their title defence in Cardiff in a repeat of the inaugural 1996 final between the pair.
Toulouse are 11/4 favourites for this year’s competition, and with the final being played on home turf this will be a huge incentive to give their fans a day to remember.
Leinster are 4/1 second favouritesto lift the trophy this year. They play Gallagher Premiership strugglers Bath in their opening game in a 3.15pm KO live from the Aviva Stadium in Dublin which will see around 30,000 fans enjoy this fixture.
The league leaders in the United Rugby Championship will fancy their chances of inflicting a huge defeat on Bath and racking up a healthy points difference from the off. Leinster will still be missing their captain and leader, Johnny Sexton, but I see Leinster winning this one by 40+ points and turning up the heat yet again on Bath’s coaching set-up.
There has been a huge surprise in European rugby this season with the resurgence of Leicester Tigers who have won all nine games in their domestic league and are playing an exciting brand of rugby under head coach Steve Borthwick.
But they are going to face their toughest challenge to date on Saturday when they play Top 14 league leaders Bordeaux away from home. This has the potential to be the game of the weekend. Bordeaux at 16/1 and Leicester at 25/1 are great outsiders to cause an upset in the Heineken Champions Cup this season, but whether they can sustain a high level throughout the season to be genuine contenders is open to question. They both have big squads, so why not?
Also on the opening weekend, previous champions meet in Coventry as Wasps host Munster, while Northampton host Racing 92 and Clermont welcome Ulster to France. It’s so important to get off to a winning start and if any of these six teams fail to do so, their chances of getting into the knockout stages will take a massive dent. Expect these games to be unbelievably competitive.
