The 2009–10 European Challenge Cup, also known as the Amlin Challenge Cup for sponsorship reasons, is the fourteenth edition of the European Challenge Cup, the annual rugby union European club competition for clubs from six nations in European rugby. It started on 8 October 2009 at Sixways Stadium in Worcester with Worcester Warriors hosting Montpellier, and will end with the final on the weekend of 21-23 May 2010. The reigning champions are Northampton Saints, who did not defend their title as they qualified for the 2009–10 Heineken Cup, and are currently in the quarterfinals of that competition.
Teams
Five English teams and eight French teams will compete because an English team - Leicester Tigers - progressed farther in the 2008-09 Heineken Cup than any French or Italian team.
Other countries will have their usual number of teams: Ireland one, Romania one and one from Spain.[1]
The draw for the pool stages took place on 15 June 2009. The seeding system was the same as for the 2008-09 tournament. The 20 competing teams were ranked based on past Heineken Cup and European Challenge Cup performance, with each pool receiving one team from each Tier.[3] The requirement to have only one team per country in each pool will, however, still apply (with the exception of the inclusion of the sixth, seventh and eight French teams).
Beginning with this season's competition, only the pool winners will advance to the knockout stage. They will be joined by three clubs from the 2009–10 Heineken Cup, specifically the third- through fifth-highest ranking teams that finished second in their pool (the top two second-place teams enter the Heineken Cup knockout stage).[4]
Team seedings
Seeding was determined by the teams' position in the ERC Rankings at the time of the pool draw in June 2009.
Bourgoin
Leeds Carnegie
Overmach Parma
Bucureşti Oaks
Connacht
Olympus Madrid
Cardiff Blues