Heineken Cup tiers revealed ahead of pool draw

NEWS EXTRA

THE ROAD to next season's Heineken Champions Cup final in Marseille will begin to be mapped out when the pool draw for the 2021/22 tournament is staged in Lausanne, Switzerland on Wednesday, July 21 at 12pm.

The Champions Cup will once again be competed for by 24 clubs with eight representatives from the Premiership, the PRO14 and the Top 14 having secured their places.

For the purposes of the draw, which will be run on the same lines as last season, the clubs will first be placed into four tiers based on their rankings, before being drawn into two pools of 12 – Pool A and Pool B. Clubs from the same league in the same tier will not be drawn into the same pool.

The number 1 and number 2 ranked clubs from each league will be in Tier 1, the number 3 and number 4 ranked clubs will be in Tier 2, the number 5 and 6 ranked clubs will be in Tier 3, and the number 7 and number 8 ranked clubs will be Tier 4.

The Tier 1 and the Tier 4 clubs which have been drawn in the same pool, but which are not in the same league, will play one another home and away during the pool stage, as will the Tier 2 and Tier 3 clubs which have been drawn in the same pool, but which are not in the same league.

The eight highestranked clubs from each pool will qualify for the knockout stage which will consist of a Round of 16 on a home and away basis, quarter-finals and semifinals, with the final in Marseille on 28 May 2022.