Former Scotland coach Matt Williams has ripped into the quality of this season’s Investec Champions Cup.
The Australian was speaking on the Off the Ball podcast after the opening round.
“The standard of some matches this weekend was really poor,” he said. “I watched a lot of the games and quite a few of them were an absolute mess.”
Williams insisted the tournament once set the global benchmark for elite club rugby, but claims that era is fading fast.
“In the old Heineken Cup, every match was phenomenal, with every team giving their best. The competition still has a lot of prestige, but many of the clubs playing in it now have lowered its value.”
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Williams added that the current 24-team pool format means the competition only starts at the quarter-final stage.
“That’s the reality of what they’ve done. Quarter-final weekend is the best weekend of club rugby of the year because you’ve got four great games.
“If you take out the round of 16 and put two more [pool games] back in October like they used to have – you have the back-to-backs in December and two in January.
“You didn’t make the playoffs unless you won five out of those six [pool matches]. Sometimes you would squeeze in with four. And so you had to turn up every week.”
“It’s dragging the standard down”
“You’d love to force them to bring their big guns out”
Matt Williams & Alan Quinlan discuss the current state of the Investec Champions Cup following the first weekend of fixtures.
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— Off The Ball (@offtheball) December 8, 2025
Photo: Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images
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