Your Sharks are back in Investec Champions Cup this week and qualification for the next stage is on the line as we welcome Toulon to Manchester. It’s the final pool stage match and we need to finish in the top four to make it through to the last 16.
But how does club rugby’s premier competition work, and what does our route to the Principality Stadium final look like? Here’s our handy guide!
- 24 clubs – eight from the TOP 14, eight from the BKT United Rugby Championship (URC), and eight from the Gallagher Premiership – have been drawn in four pools of six.
- There can only be a maximum of two clubs from the same league in each pool.
- Clubs from the same URC Shield cannot be in the same pool.
- There will be no matches between clubs from the same league, so for the purposes of creating the fixtures, each club will play four matches against four different clubs who are not from the same league, either home or away during the pool stage.
- Sale Sharks are in Pool 4 with Glasgow Warriors, Racing 92, DHL Stormers, RC Toulon and Harlequins.
- The Investec Champions Cup will be played over eight weekends with four pool stage rounds and four knockout stage rounds.
- At the conclusion of the pool stage, the four highest-ranked clubs from each pool will qualify for the Round of 16 and the clubs ranked number five in each of the pools will qualify for the knockout stage of the EPCR Challenge Cup.
- The competition culminates with the Cardiff 2025 final which will be staged at the Principality Stadium next May.
- The Investec Champions Cup will, for the first time, be broadcast live on Premier Sports.
Sale Sharks fixtures
Glasgow Warriors 38 v 19 Sale Sharks
Sale Sharks 29 v 7 Racing 92
DHL Stormers 40 v 0 Sale Sharks
Sale Sharks v RC Toulon
Sunday 19th January, 5.30pm KO
Salford Community Stadium
RC TOULON
Rugby Club Toulon actually dates back to 1908 but it wasn’t until the club was taken over in 2006 that it began to regularly taste the sort of success it is now known for.
The club was relegated to ProD2 in 2000 and after briefly returning to the top flight in 2004/05, a further relegation saw the club languishing in the second tier.
In 2006/07 Toulon businessmen Mourad Boudjellal and Stéphane Lelièvre invested in the company with the aim of immediately returning the club to the Top 14. They launched an ambitious recruitment campaign which saw the arrival of Gonzalo Quesada, Rob Henderson, Jean-Jacques Crenca, Tana Umaga, George Gregan, Andrew Mehrtens, Victor Matfield and many other international players.
Toulon were crowned French ProD2 champion for the second time in its history the following season, and once back in the elite, more high-class recruitment followed. Sonny Bill Williams and Jerry Collins joined in 2008, followed in 2009 by Phillipe Saint-André, Pierre Mignoni, Laurent Emmanuelli, Jonny Wilkinson, and Argentinians Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe and Felipe Contepomi.
After a remarkable 2009/10 season, Toulon lost in the Top 14 semi-final against the future French champion, ASM Clermont Auvergne. The following year, and after another recruitment drive which saw George Smith, Paul Sackey and Carl Hayman join the club, Toulon reached the quarter final of the Champions Cup.
More legends arrived in the summer of 2013, and Bryan Habana, Ali Williams and Drew Mitchell helped Toulon to a historic Champions Cup and Top 14 double in 2014.
More Champions Cup victories followed and the high-end recruitment continued, with rugby legends including Diego Dominguez, François Trinh-Duc, Chris Ashton, JP Pietersen and Facundo Isa arriving and then deaparting.
The RC Toulon of 2024/25 is a club focused on mixing international stars like England’s David Ribbans, Kyle Sinckler and Lewis Ludlam, Italian Paolo Garbisi and All Blacks star Leicester Fainga’anuku, with homegrown talent.
And that policy has paid off. In 2022/23 Toulon beat Glasgow to win the European Challenge Cup, ending a run of seven trophy-less seasons, and in this season’s Investec Champions Cup, the red and blacks top pool D after three wins from three games.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
David Ribbans
Former England international David Ribbans joined Toulon from Northampton Saints at the end of the 2022/23 Gallagher Premiership season.
The 6’8”, South-African born lock had arrived at Franklin’s Gardens from South African side Western Province in January 2017, making his debut against Leicester Tigers that season.
Ribbans quickly became a Saints regular, making 18 appearances in the 2017/18 season and 22 the following year. When he left Saints, Ribbans had played 115 game for the club, starting 98 times and scoring 15 tries.
Ribbans received his first England call-up in October 2020 and made his international debut from the bench the year after against New Zealand. In total he played 11 times for England.
Leicester Fainga’anuku
Tonga-born Leicester Fainga’anuku moved to New Zealand at a young age and represented NZ Secondary Schools’, Junior Knights, Crusaders Knights and the NZ Under 20 side.
He made his provincial debut for Tasman in 2018 and then joined the Crusaders as one of five new players in 2019.
He quickly made his Super Rugby debut in a match against the Highlanders and made an immediate impact, scoring two tries in his first two matches for the team.
A versatile back who can play both midfield and wing, he tasted success with the championship winning Crusaders side in the 2022 DHL Super Rugby Pacific season, and made his Test debut for New Zealand against Ireland at Eden Park on July 2, 2022.
He’s gone on to win seven caps, scoring five tries.
Gabin Villiere
Winger Gabin Villiere rose from the third-tier of French rugby to represent both the sevens and senior French side. Originally Rouen’s second-team scrum-half, a move to the wing worked wonders for Viliere as he touched down for 26 tries in 23 league matches during the 2016/17 season before being scouted by the France sevens set-up.
In his first campaign on the World Sevens circuit, he became the first France player to be named man of the tournament at the 2019 Hong Kong leg.
Villiere joined RC Toulon in May, 2019, and scored his first try for the French giants in a European Challenge Cup game against Bayonne in January, 2020.
Villiere earned his first test call up to the French national side in November 2020 and made a try-scoring debut against Italy in the 2021 Six Nations.
Villiere scored two tries in the first match of the three-Test series against Australia in 2021 and was also part of the French team that secured a famous win over New Zealand in the 2021 Autumn Internationals.
In total he has played 18 times for France, scoring eight tries.
