Heineken Cup failure on the cards for English clubs

Friday 22 January 2010
Published By: Amy Nicholson
Heineken Cup > London Irish

The pressure is on the Guinness Premiership clubs left standing in Europe, as there's a chance not one English side will reach the knockout stages.

London Irish, Northampton and Leicester all stand a reasonable chance of crashing out of the tournament, leaving the French and the Celts to battle it out among themselves.

And the Daily Telegraph noted that such a situation would be unprecedented, with at least two English clubs reaching the last eight in each of the Heineken Cup's seasons to date (except that year they all boycotted, obviously).

The paper offered a range of explanations for the situation, among them the fact that the economy has created a "general trend of belt-tightening".

However, former England back-rower Neil Back wrote for Eurosport that people shouldn't be reading too much into things, as the standings simply show "how small the margins" are in the Heineken Cup.

"It's just a damn difficult tournament to do well in and sometimes things do not always go your way," he said.