The 2014–15 European Rugby Champions Cup was the first season of the

European Rugby Champions Cup The European Rugby Champions Cup (known as the Heineken Champions Cup for sponsorship reasons) is an annual rugby union tournament organised by European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR). It is the top-tier competition for clubs who compete in a pre ...

(20th overall), the annual

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

club competition for teams from the top six nations in European rugby, and the 20th season of professional European rugby union in total. It replaced the

Heineken Cup The European Rugby Champions Cup (known as the Heineken Champions Cup for sponsorship reasons) is an annual rugby union tournament organised by European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR). It is the top-tier competition for clubs who compete in a pre ...

as Europe's top-tier competition for rugby clubs. The competition got underway on the weekend of 17 October 2014 with the first round of the pool stage, and ended with the final on 2 May 2015 at

Twickenham Stadium Twickenham Stadium () in Twickenham, south-west London, England, is a rugby union stadium owned by the Rugby Football Union (RFU), English rugby union governing body, which has its headquarters there. The England national rugby union team play ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

.Inaugural EPCR finals set for London

Toulon Toulon (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Tolon , , ) is a city on the French Riviera and a large port on the Mediterranean coast, with a major naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, and the Provence province, Toulon is th ...

were the champions having beaten Clermont 24–18 in a repeat of the

2013 Heineken Cup Final The 2013 Heineken Cup Final was the final match of the 2012–13 Heineken Cup, the 18th season of Europe's top club rugby union competition. The match was played on 18 May 2013 in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, kicking off at 5 pm (16: ...

. Toulon retained their title for the second consecutive year, the first team to win three European titles in a row.

Teams

20 clubs, from the three major European domestic leagues, will compete in the Champions Cup: * England: 7 clubs ** The top 6 clubs in the

Aviva Premiership Premiership Rugby, officially known as Gallagher Premiership Rugby, or the Gallagher Premiership for sponsorship reasons, is an English professional rugby union competition. The Premiership has consisted of thirteen clubs since 2021, and is the ...

. (6 clubs) ** There was a seventh club from England, after

Wasps A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...

won the 7th Place play-off for entry into the European Rugby Champions Cup. (1 club) * France: 6 clubs, based on performance in the

Top 14 The Top 14 () is a professional rugby union club competition that is played in France. Created in 1892, the Top 14 is at the top of the national league system operated by the French National Rugby League, also known by its French initialism o ...

. * Ireland, Italy, Scotland & Wales: 7 clubs, based on performance in the

Pro12 The United Rugby Championship (URC) is an annual rugby union competition involving professional teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales. The current name was adopted in 2021 when the league expanded to include four South Afr ...

. ** The best placed club from each nation (4 clubs) ** The 3 highest ranked clubs not qualified thereafter (3 clubs) The following clubs qualified for the competition:

20th Team play-off

The following teams took part in the play-off for the final place in the Champions Cup, having finished 7th in their respective leagues. This play-off took place over two legs, on the weekends of 17/18 May and 24/25 May, with a draw being used to determine home advantage for each leg. The draw took place on 6 May 2014, in Heathrow. Following the draw, the fixtures were announced as follows: Wasps won the play-off 50–35 on aggregate and qualified for the Champions Cup.

Team details

Below is the list of coaches, captain and stadiums with their method of qualification for each team. Note: Placing shown in brackets, denotes standing at the end of the regular season for their respective leagues, with their end of season positioning shown through CH for Champions, RU for Runner-up, SF for losing Semi-finalist and QF for losing Quarter-finalist.

Seeding

The 20 competing teams were seeded and split into four tiers; seeding was based on performance in their respective domestic leagues. For the purpose of creating the tiers, Aviva Premiership clubs were ranked only according to their finishing positions in the League table, and not based on performance in the knockout phase of the season, while Top 14 and Pro12 clubs were ranked based on their League performances and on their qualification for the knockout phases of their championships, so a losing quarter-finalist in the Top 14 would be seeded below a losing semi-finalist, even if they finished above them in the regular season.http://archive.ercrugby.com/news/28791.php ERCRugby.com. Accessed 8 June 2014 Teams were taken from a league and put into a tier; a draw was used to allocate two second seeds to Tier 1, the remaining team went into Tier 2. This allocation then determined which fourth seeded team entered Tier 2, while the others entered Tier 3. As with the previous European competition, the Heineken Cup, teams from the same country were kept apart where possible. However, as 7 teams qualified from England, 2 pools would by necessity contain two English teams and as 6 French teams qualified, there would be one pool with two French teams.

Sale Sharks Sale Sharks is a professional rugby union club from Greater Manchester, England. They play in Premiership Rugby, England's top division of rugby. Originally founded in 1861 as Sale Football Club, now a distinct amateur club, they adopted the n ...

and

would be drawn into pools which contained one other Aviva Premiership club, and

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...

would be drawn into a pool which contained one other Top 14 club. The brackets show each team's seeding and their league (for example, ''1 Top 14'' indicates the team was seeded 1st from the Top 14).

Pool stage

The draw took place on 10 June 2014, at the Stade de la Maladière in

Neuchâtel , neighboring_municipalities= Auvernier, Boudry, Chabrey (VD), Colombier, Cressier, Cudrefin (VD), Delley-Portalban (FR), Enges, Fenin-Vilars-Saules, Hauterive, Saint-Blaise, Savagnier , twintowns = Aarau (Switzerland), Besançon (France), ...

. Fixtures were announced on Thursday 14 August 2014 at 2pm. Teams played each other twice, both at home and away, in the group stage, that began on the weekend of 17/18/19 October 2014, and continued through to 23/24/25 January 2015, before the pool winners and three best runners-up progressed to the quarter finals.EPCRugby.com – 2014/15 EPCR Pool Draws
Teams were awarded competition points, based on match result. Teams receive 4 points for a win, 2 points for a draw, 1 attacking bonus point for scoring four or more tries in a match and 1 defensive bonus point for losing a match by seven points or fewer. In the event of a tie between two or more teams, the following tie-breakers were used, as directed by EPCR: # Where teams have played each other ## The club with the greater number of competition points from only matches involving tied teams. ## If equal, the club that scored the most tries in those matches. ## If equal, the club with the best aggregate points difference from those matches. # Where teams remain tied and/or have not played each other in the competition (i.e. are from different pools) ## The club with the best aggregate points difference from the pool stage. ## If equal, the club that scored the most tries in the pool stage. ## If equal, the club with the fewest players suspended in the pool stage. ## If equal, the drawing of lots will determine a club's ranking.

Pool 1

Pool 2

Pool 3

Pool 4

Pool 5

Seeding and runners-up

Knock-out stage

The eight qualifiers were seeded according to performance in the pool stage, and competed in the quarter-finals, which were held on the weekend of 3–5 April 2015. The four top seeds hosted the quarter-finals against the lower seeds, in a 1v8, 2v7, 3v6 and 4v5 format. The semi-finals were played on the weekend of 18–19 April 2015. The winners of the semi-finals will contest the final, at

Teams

20th Team play-off

Team details

Seeding

Pool stage

Pool 1

Pool 2

Pool 3

Pool 4

Pool 5

Seeding and runners-up

Knock-out stage

Bracket

Quarter-finals

Semi-finals

Final

See also

Notes

References