French head challenge amid the fun and passion

Rugby union has a Bible all to itself: 28 laws and several hundred bracketed sub-sections and appendices, as handed down by the Old Testament types on the International Board. There is a rugby Apocrypha, too, and its commandments are far more interesting than those concerning scrum bindings and crooked feeds. They state that ear-biting prop forwards are invariably nice to their mothers, that Martin Johnson's sins are always retaliatory in nature, that southern hemisphere countries must win every World Cup, that the Six Nations will forever be a two-horse race, and that only English clubs have the financial clout and strength of character to rule Europe.

All of which is as apocryphal as it gets. Some props are as badly behaved over Sunday lunch as they are on a Saturday afternoon, and even if England beat France in the first round of this season's Six Nations, they could easily fall flat on their butts in Dublin a few weeks later. And the Heineken Cup, which begins with simultaneous kick-offs in Neath and Edinburgh on Friday night? There are no certainties there, either. Premiership clubs may have won every European championship in which they have been involved since Bath first drank from the trophy in 1998, but any assumption that this latest competition will pan out as usual is fraught with potential danger.

Not that it is difficult to understand why such assumptions are made. Look at the Welsh (or, as Stuart Hall might have chortled during a particularly daft episode of It's a Knock-out: "Ha, ha, ha, just look at the Welsh.") Performance levels in the Celtic League have bordered on the subterranean, and there cannot be a single rugby follower west of the Severn who has not caught the whiff of drinking cultures, abject fitness, rampant indiscipline and rank amateurism emanating from more than one leading club. Llanelli aside – and in truth, the Scarlets are a long way short of the form that took them to within a minute or so of last season's Heineken final – it is difficult to imagine any of the boyos standing tall in Europe come the spring.

To continue with the argument, the Irish are considered decent in an Irish kind of way: all huff and puff and jagged elbows, but short of class when the big questions come to be asked. The Scots? Please. The Italians? Double please. As for the French, who once automatically included the trophy in their calculations of Gross Domestic Product, well, their club rugby now plays second fiddle to Maestro Bernard Laporte's full-blown national orchestra, and is barely audible as a result. Red rose matter is all that matters. Right? Wrong, actually. Two English qualifiers, Bristol and London Irish, are struggling so badly for results that they currently occupy the bottom two places in the Premiership, while the champions, Leicester, look more fragile than at any time since their barren campaign of 1997-98. Gloucester have the players and the crowd, but not much in the way of money; Sale have the players and the money, but no crowd. Of all the English contenders, Northampton look best equipped across the board – but they have been dumped in the most competitive pool.

Contrary to popular belief, it is reasonable to look elsewhere for a champion this time round – to south-west France and southern Ireland, to be precise. Munster, runners-up twice in three seasons and semi-finalists in 2001, could have struck gold at the Millennium Stadium last May, but were betrayed by Declan Kidney's rigid tactical and selectorial conservatism. It may well be, however, that the negative vibes generated by Peter Clohessy's retirement and Mick Galwey's retreat from the front line are outweighed by the positives of Kidney's move to the Ireland set-up and the establishment of a bold new coaching regime under Alan Gaffney. The Cork-Limerick collective are in an absolute pig of a group, but they want this one more badly than any of the other 23 teams.

If Munster's case is persuasive, those of Biarritz and Toulouse are more powerful still. The former committed what might be described as "le coq-up sportif" in last season's tournament, allowing a half-baked Bath side to beat them home and away in the pool phase. But the Basques found consolation in their domestic championship, beating a crack Agen side in a wonderfully competitive final, and enter this tournament as top French seeds. They have already won at Montferrand and Castres this season, and are said to be humming.

Toulouse, true masters of European rugby whose recent campaigns have been undermined by everything from last-minute penalty defeats in Gwent to a major chemical explosion on the very doorstep of their home stadium, look even better. They have not lost since the end of August, and are considered a hot bet for the French title in June. It is not the French title that tops their priority list, though. "If we win our own championship, everybody hates us because we are a big club," their president, Rene Bouscatel, said last week. "But if we win the Heineken, suddenly the whole of France loves us. And we want to be loved."

This is not a perfectly constructed tournament, not quite. On current evidence, the most satisfying gathering of Europe's élite would include Stade Français rather than Beziers, Agen rather than Bourgoin, Pontypridd rather than Swansea, Wasps rather than either of England's bottom feeders, Treviso rather than Viadana or the ever-chantable Ghial Amatori & Calvisano (all together now...). That, however, is the way of it when teams qualify from the previous season, thereby giving themselves sufficient time and opportunity to lose their edge.

And anyway, it is a minor gripe. Among the most common refrains in rugby, right up there with the Rugby Football Union's deeply Machiavellian "developing nations need help, not money" mantra and the player unions' classic "our members are far too tired to contemplate additional matches unless you bung them £10,000" line, is the one about the Heineken Cup being more competitive, more passionate and massively more fun than the Six Nations. Unlike the other examples, it is a fair and honest statement. Not apocryphal at all, in fact.

FIRST-ROUND FIXTURES

FRIDAY
Pool 1: Neath v Leicester (7.30)
Pool 3: Sale v Bourgoin (7.45)
Pool 4: Leinster v Bristol (7.35)
Pool 5: Edinburgh v Newport (7.30)

SATURDAY
Pool 1: Calvisano v Béziers (1.30)
Pool 2: Gloucester v Munster (3.0); Perpignan v Viadana (6.30)
Pool 3: Llanelli v Glasgow (2.30)
Pool 4: Montferrand v Swansea (6.30)
Pool 5: Toulouse v London Irish (2.0)
Pool 6: Cardiff v Biarritz (5.30)

SUNDAY
Pool 6: Northampton v Ulster (4.30)

GUIDE TO THE HEINEKEN CUP

Pool One

Béziers, Calvisano, Leicester, Neath

Leicester should be looking resplendent in the champions' purple, but their rugby this season has been murky brown at best and Friday night's dark-hued trip to Neath is likely to prove a suitably brown-trousered affair. The rest of the pool phase will be more to their liking, however: the tournament debutants from Béziers have been firing blanks in the French championship – one win in six does not do much for confidence – while the Italians of Calvisano are not noticeably stronger now than a year ago, when they were smithereened in all directions. Back the Tigers to qualify, unimpressively.

Pool Two

Gloucester, Munster, Perpignan, Viadana

Put it this way: Viadana will have to play pretty well to go through unbeaten. Of all the unholy threesomes thrown together by the Heineken Cup draw over the last seven seasons, this one takes the cream cake. Gloucester have been at their best in the Premiership, Munster remain the most ruthless of the Irish contenders, Perpignan possess one of the more formidable packs in the French game. Connoisseurs of the brutal ballet of scrum, ruck and maul will love every minute of this; gentler souls should head for the hills and stay put until the dust has settled.

Pool Three

Bourgoin, Glasgow, Llanelli, Sale

Welsh rugby may be about as healthy as a 40-a-day smoker with a gammy leg and a whisky habit, but Llanelli will be up for this. Twice the Scarlets have been diddled out of the competition at the semi-final stage and Gareth Jenkins, their supremely able coach, has made it his personal business to win the damned thing whatever the cost. This is a tough group to call, though: if Sale's wonderful back-line catches fire, if Philippe Saint-André maximises Bourgoin's undoubted potential, if Glasgow build on their encouraging Celtic League form – in short, no one can be ruled in or out.

Pool Four

Bristol, Leinster, Montferrand, Swansea

Mighty names, mouse-like performances. Swansea, an utter shambles, will do well to win more than one game, but their opponents are no great shakes either. Montferrand, up to their eyebrows in quality backs, will certainly apply boot to posterior at Parc des Sports Marcel Michelin, but they travel poorly and have somehow perfected the art of turning wine into water. If they leave Dublin with any sort of result, they will surely progress. If not, Bristol could make their presence felt with their out-sized pack and their big-occasion Argentinians in the decision-making positions.

Pool Five

Edinburgh, London Irish, Newport, Toulouse

The middle chunk of pool matches in December, when Edinburgh and Toulouse come together, may well decide the outcome here. Edinburgh? Yes, Edinburgh. The Scots, finally fronting up under the ultra-professional leadership of Todd Blackadder, have been scoring in excess of 30 points a game in Celtic League rugby (twice as many as Newport), and can now claim to be a force, as opposed to a farce. Toulouse may prove just a little too hot for them – worryingly, the Frenchmen have abandoned their time-honoured tradition of starting the season in the land of nod – but they may make it through as runners-up.

Pool Six

Biarritz, Cardiff, Northampton, Ulster

Cardiff are finding it difficult to field a competitive pack, but they generally fight like dogs at the Arms Park and are well capable of inflicting grief on their supposed betters in this group. The same goes for Ulster, bolstered by the former Springbok front-rower Robbie Kempson and buttressed, as ever, by the home comforts of Ravenhill. Biarritz, in hot form across the Channel, and Northampton, a very serious proposition indeed at Franklin's Gardens, should be the major players here, but there is nothing remotely minor about their rivals. Down to the wire? Probably.