Alan Watkins: Baffling rules mean Heineken Cup's grand feast leaves sour taste

Last week I wrote that by today all would be clear. We would know who the quarter-finalists in the Heineken Cup would be. Accordingly it was a waste of effort to perform various intricate calculations of a kind which most people would not have struggled with since their schooldays, and then only if they had been paying attention and not fooling around at the back of the class.

This was, I think, good advice. Last week observers were making all kinds of assumptions which, in the event, turned out to be false. One was that, though Munster might well defeat Gloucester in Limerick, they would fail to do so by a margin sufficient to qualify for the later stages of the competition.

Another assumption was that Toulouse would beat London Irish, even though they were playing away. Indeed, the commentators on the Bristol v Leinster match on Sunday afternoon were banking on this happening. The consequence would then be that Leinster would be playing Munster at home in the quarter-finals. Instead they will be playing Biarritz. The result of their having outstripped Toulouse in the final count, with six wins out of six.

Though we know what is going to happen in April, it does not mean we can afford to feel at all satisfied with the way these fixtures have been decided. I agree entirely with the views of Thomas Castaignède as expressed in a newspaper column yesterday. And Castaignède, I am fortified to learn, agrees with me.

To take eight quarter-finalists out of six groups is to invite feelings of dissatisfaction, even of having somehow been cheated, certainly of having been hard done by. This is what Bourgoin, Gloucester and Ulster now feel, with varying degrees of justification; and it is hard to blame them. Much better to have eight groups of four, as I suggested last week, or four groups of six or five, with first and second teams both going through to the quarter-finals.

What is perhaps more important is that it is ridiculous to embrace a system which even the players themselves do not understand. In the epic Munster v Gloucester match, for example, Ludovic Mercier, the Gloucester outside-half, did not realise that he could deprive Munster of their necessary margin of victory by taking what was, for him, a fairly simple penalty. Instead he went unsuccessfully for a try, having been told, or so I assume, that in this competition tries were what counted. Phil Vickery, the Gloucester captain, said afterwards that he was not around when the decision was taken not to go for goal. Whether Vickery is familiar with the maths I do not know.

Nor was Mercier the only outside-half with an imperfect understanding of these matters. His opposite No 10, Ronan O'Gara, did not apparently realise that his side's chances of qualifying depended on his conversion rather than on John Kelly's try which had gone before. No doubt this was a good thing from O'Gara's point of view. But still, it makes you think.

I described the Munster match as an epic. So did everyone else. And so, indeed, it was. But it was not really about rugby football. Why do I say this? For years, after all, I have been urging the virtues of running rugby, and have on that account been called a sentimentalist or a Welsh romantic or, sometimes, both. Here we have a match – more than this, a competition – which puts a premium on tries. And still I am complaining.

The reason is simple. It lies in the artificiality of the complicated rules. If we are so keen on tries, let us instead alter the laws of the game: whether by increasing the points value of a try in relation to other scores or, more radically, by abolishing the place-kick entirely and giving a try a value of three points and a drop-goal of two (or, if you prefer, two points and one, respectively).

Whatever view you take of this proposal, we ought certainly to be saved from a system which, in Pool Two, gives Perpignan, Munster and Gloucester eight points each in the final table with a points difference of, respectively, 20, 99 and 101. And yet Gloucester, with the most favourable points difference of the three, are the team to be eliminated.

This is not meant to be ungrateful to the organisers of the event. The Heineken Cup is now the most exciting competition in Europe, apart from the Six Nations' Championship. It has added to the life of Limerick, as it has to that of Llanelli. I regret the fate of Cardiff and Swansea. Neath, however, acquitted themselves well, while Newport were not a complete disgrace. The winners so far are the Irish provinces, with Ulster perhaps unlucky not to be joining Leinster and Munster. Still, they ought to simplify the rules.