Jake White’s Montpellier bounced back from their comprehensive loss away from home to Glasgow Warriors last week by beating fellow French team Toulouse in their final European Rugby Champions Pool 4 match on Sunday. Montpellier won a closely contested match by the narrowest of margins with a final score of 27 / 26 in their favour.
This victory for Montpellier meant that Saracens qualified for the last eight of the Cup in spite of losing their last Pool 1 match against pool winners Clermont Auvergne. The score in that match Clermont Auvergne 18 / 6 Saracens.
The 5 pool winners along with the 3 best second placed team advanced and Saracens made it through as the last qualifying with the lowest amount of points from their 6 matches (17). Had Toulouse won they would have qualified as Pool 4 winners along with Bath who won their Pool 4 match against Glasgow Warriors. Toulouse also ended the pool stage on 17 points but Saracens got through via a superior points difference, +14 versus Toulouse’s +2.
The quarter finals will be contested between 1 team from Ireland, 3 from France and 4 from England with the English teams all due to play their games away from home. This is the first time since 1998 that 4 English teams have made it to the quarter finals of Europe’s elite club competition. The quarter finals are to be played on the weekend of the 3 to 5 April 2015.
European Rugby Champions Cup Quarter Final Fixtures
- Racing Metro vs Saracens
- Toulon vs Wasps
- Clermont Auvergne vs Northampton
- Leinster vs Bath
Was very disappointed with a depleted Glasgow losing against Bath yesterday (20/15 to Bath), didn’t get to watch but it sounds like Glasgow put a good fight only just missing out on a try really late in the game by some good last ditch tackling by Bath. Had that been scored and converted Glasgow could have been top of the group and into the quarter finals for the first time.
Glasgow went to Bath with a depleted pack of forwards and sounds like were given a very hard time in the scrums by Bath, one of Bath’s two penalty tries came from a scrum. Their other penalty try came from a maul and Glasgow captain Kellock got 10min in the bin for his role in the infringement.
Getting back to the packs, sounds like Bath had all their best props available and were more settled, while Glasgow had a make shift backrow with our first 6 loose forwards out which meant a lock, hooker and now centre were picked. The annoying thing is a player like young Will Bordill who is a specialist loose forward may have made a difference but due to European Rugby rules he couldn’t play as he was not in the original squad Glasgow announced for Europe and they had made use of the two changes they could make for this years competition.
2 @ Bullscot:
Adding to the pack woes, there were at least 3 top props not available for Glasgow as well – two tightheads and one loosehead, while two locks were out injured as well, and with the loose forward issues one lock, Nakarawa, was doing duty in the back row.
1 @ Bullscot:
It was interesting to note Francois Louw played a big part in the win for Bath in the end. In the 79th minute Sean Maitland was so close to scoring but was stopped by joint tackle from Jonathan Joseph and big Sam Burgess, Glasgow then switched play to other side of field but it ended with Francois Louw pulling off a turnover which robbed Glasgow of possesion so close…
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