THE proud boast of all versions of the Champions Cup over the last 20 years has been that it has pitted the best of the three big European leagues against each other on an equal footing. Last season, doubts began to creep in. One league, the Guinness PRO12, had no team in the knockout stages.

With player budgets in England and France soaring, and the Celtic teams struggling to compete on wages, was this a sign of the future? Were we about to see European rugby follow football and become the personal playground of the big spenders?

For Gregor Townsend, the head coach of the Glasgow Warriors, it was probably just a blip, one of those years when all the tight encounters that could have gone either way went against the PRO12 teams. All the same, he knows his side have never made the knockout stage, never made a case for Celtic rugby, and that has to change, not just for the team but for the credibility of the league.

“Last year, some games went the way of the English and French clubs and we will see whether that was down to the World Cup or more competition, more quality players, coming into France and England,” he said. “When I look around the teams in the top half of the PRO12, there is nothing but quality. You look at the Ulster team and the way they played against us [two weeks ago], that was close to the best you will get at club level, they are full of brilliant players. Leinster are similar. Connacht last year, if they can get back to that sort of form they will be a match for any team.

“It is great for the competition that the English and French teams are doing better because it used to be dominated by the PRO12. These things happen in cycles, but let’s hope from a PRO12 point of view that we will have representation. There are teams good enough to get into the last eight but so are a number of teams from France and England.”

Over the course of the tournament, the Celtic sides have provided just under a third of the quarter- and semi-finalists, about a quarter of the finalists and about a third of the winners, so it is hard to argue that one league has had an advantage over the long term.

The PRO12 sides did have a glory period from 2006 to 2012, culminating in the year they supplied five quarter-finalists, three to the semis and both finalists, but since then they have been steadily falling back, culminating in last season’s whitewash.

Yet, for Glasgow, the new-look competition should hold enough benefits to make them feel they have a chance. The real benefit for the big spenders comes in the league, where they can rotate players without a drop in quality, rather than the cup, where everybody is going for broke. On top of that, a strong second place in the pool should get them through – they only have to finish ahead of two of Leicester, Munster or Racing 92, not all three.

One thing has not changed, though. Teams that lose at home in effect don’t qualify. Which puts a massive emphasis on Glasgow’s opening match against Leicester on Friday.

Townsend said: “We have had two opening [home] games in Europe in the last two years – Bath, which couldn’t have gone much better, and Northampton, which couldn’t have gone much worse.

“We have got to make sure it is a Bath game in the way that we set out with pace and accuracy and defend well. We will need to pressure Leicester every minute of the game.”