Danny Wilson’s has backed calls to play Champions Cup semi-finals at a neutral venue after Toulouse and Leinster enjoyed home city advantage last weekend.
Under current tournament regulations, the highest ranked teams in the semi-finals are given home country advantage but that was taken a stage further last weekend.
Leinster faced Northampton at Croke Park, a couple of miles from their Dublin base, while Toulouse took on Harlequins at the city’s football stadium, a ground they have regularly used for big matches.
The Champions Cup organisers are looking at the feasibility of staging the semi-finals in a neutral country, but with only a couple of weeks between the quarter and semi-finals, it would need to be in a country that would not have a team involved, like Portugal or Spain.
“I would support a neutral venue 100 per cent,” said Wilson, the Harlequins head coach. “I did not understand Toulouse playing in the city’s football stadium down the road from their own ground. It is a home fixture.
“Northampton must feel the same going to Ireland and playing in Croke Park. It is what it is and we knew it would be the case. But if you make the semi-finals, the best four teams in Europe, it suggests to me, and this may be old school and what it used to be, playing in a neutral venue.
“You have won two knock-out games to get there. It is different in your pool when you are mounting points and the standings dictate the first knock-out game, but I think the semi-finals are the point where it should become neutral.”
Another issue for the organisers is ticket sales. Nearly 115,000 spectators turned up for last weekend’s semi-finals, but would enough supporters travel to another country to make it commercially viable?
Home city advantage is nothing new in the Champions Cup and in the early years the top ranked teams played at their own grounds. Leicester have played semi-finals in the city’s football ground, London Irish faced Toulouse at Twickenham in 2008, Leinster have played at the Aviva Stadium and Croke Park before this season, and Cardiff Blues took on Leicester at the then Millennium Stadium in 2009.
