European Rugby 2023-24

Just saw this from last Friday's Telegraph.

It is understood that the new format will include 24 teams competing in four pools of six, and with the opening two rounds taking place in December. Each pool will comprise two clubs from each of the three competing leagues – the Premiership, United Rugby Championship and Top 14, drawn on a ranking basis. Clubs from the same league in each pool will not play against each other, resulting in four pool matches

Based on that it would seem to suggest that it won't be home and away, we would play two English and two French sides, one of each at home, but I could be reading that wrong, or they could have picked it up wrong.
Though it does suggest that we won't necessarily be playing all our games against finalists, with more of an even distribution of teams instead.


www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2023/05/...-format-next-season/

... but isn't that effectively the exact same format as this season? Except that the pool is split in half. In the above case you would be guaranteed that two Pot 4 sides would make the playoffs (quite likely without winning any games).
I saw some references to an article in the (London) Times that said home and away was gone but didn't read the full thing.
Though in both cases these articles were written in advance of an alleged meeting over the weekend, so something entirely different could have been decided there!

I was assuming the format change would be aimed at making it less batS#!+ as opposed to more ...
But this is EPCR so who knows.
I do have to admire the optimism of a Munster fan who feels entitled to play 3 of his 4 games at home
I would assume that whatever the details of the format each team would play one higher ranked and one lower ranked team from each of the other leagues.
And the one thing that you can say for certain is that everyone will play the same number of home games in the pool stage, I don't think even EPCR will go that far off the reservation.

Simon Massie-Taylor on GBR podcast confirmed the new format as above - four pools of six, where you play four of the five other teams - with final details to be worked out over the next week or so. Nothing really new there as PRL were presumably the source for the original stories, but it does mean that it wasn't shot down at the weekend, and the fact that he is saying it in interviews and not giving the usual <<nothing is agreed until everything is agreed>> suggests it's probably a runner.

So I'm going to go ahead and pick our pool:
Munster
Connacht
La Rochelle
Bayonne
Leicester
Harlequins

We beat Quins at home and Bayonne away and then beat Stade Francais away in the last 16 or something along those lines.

Yes, I think that is the case. If it works the way I guess it will then the two teams from a given league in each pool will be from the opposite seeding, e.g. Connacht as 7th seed would be with Munster or Stormers and Ulster as 4th would be with Glasgow/Bulls. That would guarantee balance to the pools. So as you say a higher seeding doesn't give you easier games. So in that way it would be one of the fairer systems we've had.
There will be some anomalies e.g. one of Munster/Stormers would be in the same pool as Cardiff meaning all their Anglo-French rivals will have a theoretically handy enough game against the Welsh side while the URC team have a tougher fixture list, but that is a flaw of the qualification and seeding system as opposed to the format. It would be arguably worse under the other systems where some lucky teams get Cardiff twice.
(Of course Cardiff may have a great season and I for one fully expect them to beat Saracens and not pin this post to the wall when we meet them in the Quarter Final)