Despite the fact that it has been a largely positive start to European rugby for three of the four Irish provinces, there is growing consensus across the rugby world that the continent's premier competition has lost its glamour.
Once the most revered competition in club rugby, The Champions Cup has seen a drastic drop in quality since its post-covid-reform that removed much of the high-jeopardy pool games which had become synonymous with the competition.
Those issues have only been exasperated by the struggles the newly-introduced South African sides are facing with travel and the struggles Premiership sides are facing attempting to play on two fronts.
Unlike the URC where the South African integration has proved relatively effortless thanks to multi-week stints in Europe and vice-versa, the Champions Cup can require clubs to travel between South Africa and Europe game-to-game.
As a result, travelling clubs have been opting to field weaker teams for their away clashes, all but resigning themselves to heavy defeats in what are effectively non-contests.
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Bernard Jackman on how to solve the current Champions Cup conundrum
As the rugby community begin to come to terms with the competition's flaws, more and more high-profile names in the UK including Stephen Jones and Stuart Barnes are calling for changes to be made, with everything from removing the South African teams to a radical overhaul of the international rugby schedule being tabled over the last fortnight.
While Bernard Jackman was quick to admit that a problem did exist, the former Leinster man turned pundit rubbished the idea of ridding the tournament of South African teams.
Jackman was speaking on the RTÉ Rugby Podcast when he claimed that the 'only solution' to the issue lay in a change of scheduling.
The future for them (South African teams) in this competition is really important, people say you can leave them out..but I think they can add something to it. There's not enough quality teams in it, and on their day the Sharks, the Stormers or the Bulls could be a contender.
I think the only solution is that the organisers allow them effectively come on tour, where they maybe play two away games in Europe back-to-back.
Or a neutral venue, a home game away from home. They rent The Stoop or whatever and try and tap into the diaspora there and then maybe they'll back up a URC game at the end of it and play three games in a row.
I know chatting to them they actually don't mind coming up here for three weeks, it's coming up and then back again and playing at the back of it (that's the issue). At the moment it's damaging the brand, its damaging the competition, I don't want to be negative about it but unfortunately what we've seen over the last two weeks doesn't give youy confindence that this competition is on the right track.
Jackman revealed that he had been speaking to South African players during his trip there for the SAS Rugby coaching conference earlier this month.
While in principle Jackman's suggestion would provide an immediate fix for the competition, as he admitted himself, without an aligned international calendar the length of South Africa's season could still cause issues.
Currently, South African internationals play their international rugby in the Southern Hemisphere's Rugby Championship between August and September, before immediately starting their club season in the Northern Hemisphere which runs until early summer.
As the Northern Hemisphere club season concludes, the South Africans get just a small break before their international season kicks off with the Summer internationals, in what is essentially becoming a year-round season for regular Springboks playing their club game in Europe.
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