Heineken Cup Draw Live Online
The draw for the composition of the six pools of four teams each for the 15th Heineken Cup tournament will take place in Paris next Tuesday at 12pm local time/11am Irish time. The draw will be streamed live on the ERC website.
Leinster will be defending the title they won at Murrayfield last month when the 2009/10 Heineken Cup kicks off on the weekend of October 9-11 and climaxes in the 2010 final at Stade de France on Saturday, May 22.
The draw will be made by ERC Chairman Jean-Pierre Lux and the pools will be confirmed soon afterwards here on IrishRugby.ie.
You can watch the draw live online on www.ercrugby.com from 11am.
2009/10 HEINEKEN CUP TEAMS AND TIERS:
TIER 1 – Munster, Leicester Tigers, Leinster, Toulouse, Bath, Biarritz Olympique
TIER 2 – Cardiff Blues, Stade Francais, Gloucester, Perpignan, Ospreys, London Irish
TIER 3 – Northampton Saints, Sale Sharks, Clermont Auvergne, Scarlets, Ulster, Newport Gwent Dragons
TIER 4 – Harlequins, Glasgow Warriors, Edinburgh, Treviso, Brive, Viadana
Heineken Cup Pool Draw Format –
Key Principles
• For the purpose of the draw, the 24 qualified teams are ranked based on their ERC European rankings and are divided into four tiers.
Rankings are based on European performance over the past four seasons in the Heineken Cup and knock-out stages of the European Challenge Cup
• Each pool will have one team from each of the four tier levels
• No two teams from the same country will be drawn in the same pool except for the seventh club from England (Harlequins based on European ranking) which will be drawn into a pool with another English team
• The winners of the Heineken Cup (Leinster) will be seeded in the first tier and will be drawn into a pool first