Edited see other comment below!

With Irish gone we have to get Worcester

And it's Worcester.

Woohoo, back to Brive.

So we have to get London Irish or Worcester.

Into Tier 2 - inauspicious start ...

Hoping for a pool that points straight to Bilbao - Pau, Worcester & Krasny - or a gold-plated pig of a pool that'll break the cash registers - Stade, Irish & Toulouse - and nothing in between.

Challenge Cup Draw at 1. Champions Cup follows after.
At 3pm Salmson and I will sit down with James Comey to discuss potential Russian involvement.

From 1pm

When is the draw due to happen?

There will be live commentary and analysis of the draw with Pinky and Salmson available on the Red Button.

Looks like Pinky's numbers are spot on and mine were way off. Attached is a cheatsheet of the possible draws.

Why do you reckon we are more likely to get Stade than Newcastle?
Wouldn't we be equally likely to get the English or French team of the same rank?

I don't reckon we can get Stade and Sale. If we get Stade, that means we're in Pot 2 (with Sale) so we'd have to get a Pot 3 English team (Worcester or Irish).

I make the magic numbers for the various teams to be:
SF Paris,Newcastle - 8.33%
Brive,Gloucester,Pau,Sale - 16.67%
Lyon,Worcester,Bordeaux,London Irish - 29.17%
Toulouse,Oyonnax,Agen,Enisei,Krasny Yar - 20%

But I could have missed something.
Edit: and indeed I did - I didn't take into account that Pot 2 will be drawn before Pot 3, etc. so all the teams in Pot 3 aren't equally likely, I think that's right now - ah, I'm off to bed ...

With Saints in the Champions Cup and Stade in the Challenge I've been looking at the permutations and combinations...

- The top 3 pots will contain 5 sides from each of the 3 big leagues, so by the time we get to Pot 4 each pool will have one from each. This means any of the Pot 4 teams can be drawn into any of the pools. We have a 20% chance of meeting Toulouse, Agen, Oyannax, Enesei or Krasny.

- Things are more complicated for the other pots, we could be drawn in either of Pot 1 or Pot 2. The two most likely opponents are Sale (39%) and Pau (28%), but we can't meet both as they're both in the same pot. Newcastle (8%) and Stade (11%) are our least likely possible opponents.

- The 15 possible pools (ignoring pot 4 as it's a free-for-all) in descending order of likelihood are:
=1 Pau & Irish, Sale & Bordeaux. 12.5% each
Stade & Sale, Brive & Sale, Gloucs & Pau. 11.1% each
=6 Brive & Worcester, Brive & Irish, Pau & Worcester, Lyon & Worcester, Lyon & Irish, Newcastle & Lyon, Newcastle & Bordeaux, Gloucs & Lyon, Gloucs & Bordeaux, Sale & Lyon. 4.2% each

- Obviously the draw for which pot we're in will rule out tons of options in itself. Most interestingly, if we were drawn into pot 2 there are only 3 possible pairings we can get from Pots 1 and 3: Stade, or Brive, with Sale, or Gloucs and Pau. I'll do up a full listing nearer to the draw.

For some reason I thought London Irish could be a bottom seed

I'd say from a commercial standpoint Connacht would love

Stade
Connacht
London Irish
Toulouse

If that was possible

From a best bet to qualify standpoint I'd say we'd like

A group of
Connacht
Pau
London Irish/Worcester
Krasny yar

So with Northampton having squeaked through, Stade are in the mix and Toulouse end up in Pot 4 (making a bit of a joke of EPCRs seeding system). Depending on what way the preliminary draw works out (to decide what second ranked team misses out on a top seeding), the pots could end up one of 3 ways:

Pot 1:SF Paris,Newcastle,Cardiff,Brive,Gloucester
Pot 2:Connacht,Pau,Sale,Edinburgh,Dragons
Pot 3:Lyon,Worcester,Bordeaux,London Irish ,Zebre
Pot 4:Toulouse,Oyonnax,Agen ,Enisei,Krasny Yar

Pot 1:SF Paris,Newcastle,Cardiff,Gloucester,Connacht
Pot 2:Brive,Pau,Sale,Edinburgh,Lyon
Pot 3:Worcester,Dragons,Bordeaux,London Irish ,Zebre
Pot 4:Toulouse,Oyonnax,Agen ,Enisei,Krasny Yar

Pot 1:SF Paris,Newcastle,Cardiff,Brive,Connacht
Pot 2:Gloucester,Pau,Sale,Edinburgh,Worcester
Pot 3:Lyon,Dragons,Bordeaux,London Irish ,Zebre
Pot 4:Toulouse,Oyonnax,Agen ,Enisei,Krasny Yar

So good chance we will avoid Paris and Newcastle. And good chance we will get one of Bordeaux and Irish and one of Worcester and Lyon.

Fourdogs wrote: I'd say €3,000 would cover everything.:whistle:

And with two team owners to split the costs, they'll only have to pay €1500 for each of us - sure we're well worth it.