Peter Jackson column: Stripe me! How can this Zebre side be Champions?

Zebre have lost their last four away matches by scores that could double up as opening stands at the T20 World Cup – 52-0, 32-0, 47-0 and 29-0. It adds up to a cumulative score of 0-160.
Despite those results, Zebre are on course to take their place in what Europe’s clubs call the Champions’ Cup, a grandiose description for a tournament supposedly reserved for the crème de la crème.
Edinburgh stand to suffer more than their Welsh rivals, ironically so given that they duly followed Leinster, Ulster and Munster in taking maximum-point advantage of the depleted Italians at Murrayfield on Friday night.  Scotland’s capital team may have lost a few games too many but they stand alone as the only club to have done the double over the champions, Glasgow.
Ospreys, twice crowned Pro 12 champions with not one but two Grand Final victories over Leinster in Dublin to their credit, supplied the Lions with five players for their last tour and may well supply five more for the next one, to New Zealand next year.  Despite their proven quality and ever-presence on the starting grid for Europe’s premier competition over the last 13 seasons, the Swansea-based side will be disqualified from the Champions’ Cup even if they recover sufficiently to finish seventh.
Some will say serve them right for a season of under-achievement, that nobody gets a free ride into Europe because it’s a competitive world – except that argument doesn’t apply when it comes to rewarding one Italian team for avoiding bottom place.
The same fate awaiting Edinburgh or the Ospreys could also very easily apply to a third club, Cardiff Blues. They are in the same boat and therefore in much the same danger of running aground despite having scored the most tries and most points going into the weekend round of matches.
Although seven places are available to Pro 12 teams in the Champions’ Cup, seventh gets whoever finishes there nowhere.  Rules are rules and the multi-national dimension of the Pro 12 requires that all four countries must be represented, including Italy, irrespective of where their two teams finish.
Treviso qualified from second last place because they lost only 18 of their 22 matches against Zebre’s 19.  Both are still in the bottom two except that Zebre have reversed the roles on the strength of a Christmas double over their compatriots.
Connacht were sacrificed last season although their seventh place did earn them entry to an abortive play-off series involving Gloucester and Bordeaux.      The intrusion of the World Cup leaves no room this season for any play-offs. Whoever finishes seventh – Ospreys, Edinburgh or the Cardiff Blues – will go straight into the secondary European Challenge Cup along with all those stranded in the nether regions of the Premiership, Top 14 and Pro 12.
Altruism is a noble quality. Guaranteeing Italy a place at the top table of the club game gives some reason for using the word European in the context of the Champions’ Cup.
It seemed a good idea at the time, one agreed on the basis that the Italian teams would become more competitive. Instead they have become less competitive, jammed in the same reverse gear as the national team.
If the tournament organisers, European Professional Club Rugby, are not already under pressure to review the Italian arrangement, it can be but a matter of time before they are.
The rules, as agreed by the Pro 12 as well as everyone else, dictate that the first four Pro 12 places go to the highest ranked team from Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. If, for argument’s sake, the top eight finish in the same positions as they were on Friday morning, Connacht (1st), Zebre (11th), Glasgow (6th) and Scarlets (3rd) would fill those four positions.
That leaves three more to be filled by the remainder of the top six – Leinster (2nd), Munster (4th) and Ulster (5th). Ireland, therefore, face the happy prospect of all four provinces making the Champions’ Cup for the first time. Wales face the grim one of their representation being halved to one.
For the chosen few, Europe’s supreme club event brings prestige and commercial clout.  In a true meritocracy nobody qualifies for losing four matches out of every five even if that means narrowing the horizon of the tournament and renaming it the FIB (French, Irish, British) Cup.