Knock-out format provides Parker Pen Cup with punch

It is a second-string tournament with a two-tier element, which will inevitably produce some third-tier rugby once the opening exchanges are completed on Sunday week, and there have been notorious instances of teams regarding the whole caboodle as unworthy of their full attention.

There is no great likelihood of a game-throwing scandal this season, however. The newly-minted Parker Pen Challenge Cup – a natural derivative of the Parker Pen Shield – is in serious danger of being popular, to the extent that rugby nations as far-flung as Portugal and Georgia crave a piece of the action.

Nine months ago, Agen deliberately lost at Ebbw Vale because they were more interested in their chances of winning the French Championship and were banned from all European rugby for one year. Yet the light of reason shone through the darkness cast by the sinners, in the sense that the incident persuaded the directors of European Rugby Cup Ltd to see the tournament for what it had become: expensive, unwieldy, uncompetitive and uncommercial.

The round-robin pool structure was duly abandoned, and a home-and-away knock-out format introduced for this campaign. The first-round losers – it does not require a soothsayer to predict that Dinamo Bucharest, Madrid 2012, La Moraleja Alcobendas and Rugby Rovigo will be among them – can look forward to a plate competition designed to spare them more 80-point marmalisations, and leave the serious issue of automatic Heineken Cup qualification to the grown-ups. And what grown-ups there are: Harlequins are 99 per cent certain to play Stade Français in the second round, Bath are seeded to meet Pau or Bridgend, Saracens can start thinking about the born-awkward Frenchmen of Colomiers. Eighteen of the 32 sides have experience of the élite Heineken competition. As Derek McGrath, the ERC chief executive, said yesterday: "This is a tournament demanding its own time in the spotlight." What McGrath could not say was how one looming problem would be addressed. Agen's suspension worked in ERC's favour, for they were able to add the new Scottish Borders team to the mix without dropping one of the sides from Spain or Romania.

But the French will be back to strength next season, and, with the format demanding a 32-team entry, hard decisions will have to be made.

There are two obvious solutions: a reduction in the number of Welsh entrants – very much a possibility, given the anticipated restructuring of the domestic game in the Principality – or an expansion of the tournament to include the strongest Georgian, Russian, Portuguese and Dutch clubs, with a qualifying round for the weaker teams. Whatever happens, the Romanians and Spanish must be kept inside the tent. International rugby is betraying these people right now. God forbid that European club rugby should emasculate them even further.

PARKER PEN CHALLENGE CUP First-round fixtures: 11 Oct: Gran Parma v Bath; Ebbw Vale v Montauban. 12 Oct: Dinamo Bucharest v Saracens; Roma v Pontypridd; L'Aquila v Colomiers; Treviso v Castres; Petrarca v Leeds; Caerphilly v Harlequins; Silea v Narbonne; Madrid v Borders; La Moraleja Alcobendas v Bordeaux-Bègles; Overmach Parma v Wasps; Mont de Marsan v Connacht; Grenoble v Newcastle; Pau v Bridgend. 13 Oct: Silea v Narbonne; Rovigo v Stade Français.