Ranking Europe's Top 15 Club Teams After Weekend of April 4-5

The Champions Cup quarter-finals produced three of the four semi-finalists who made it this far last season.

Leinster have displaced Munster as the Irish member of the quartet that will see Saracens face Clermont Auvergne once again while Toulon lie in wait for the Dubliners.

The last eight saw triumphs for grit and grind in two of the games while flair and flamboyance won the day in the Massif Central. Toulon’s victory combined a bit of both to see Wasps off.

In the second tier of the tournament, Gloucester and Exeter set themselves on collision course in the semi-finals with the winners set to face either Edinburgh or the Dragons.

But the last eight of the game’s premier European tournament dominate the upper echelons of these rankings once again, with Northampton suffering a mighty bruising after that horror show in Clermont.

Here is where they stand.

15. Exeter

The Chiefs march on in the Challenge Cup after beating Newcastle.

They are on Leicester’s heels in the league in fifth place but have to play three Champions Cup quarter-finalists in their run-in with fixtures against Northampton, Saracens and Wasps all still to come.

Gloucester await in the European semi-final in a season that has seen Rob Baxter's men reach the LV Cup final already and could yet see them sneak into the playoffs in the Premiership.

14. Ospreys

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Ospreys are fourth in the Pro 12 table with a four-point cushion over Leinster as they bid for a play-off spot.

Their recruitment for next season is already underway with former All Black Brendon Leonard the latest New Zealand No. 9 to join the region for the 2015-16 campaign, per Wales Online.

He should get plenty of game time early in the campaign with current incumbent Rhys Webb set for a starring role for Wales at the World Cup.

13. Leicester

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The Tigers are fourth in the Premiership, a point above Exeter, one behind Bath and a further one behind Saracens.

A tough trip to Sarries is next before they host London Welsh. On that weekend, however, Saracens will be at Northampton, so win against the Fez heads and Richard Cockerill’s men could be gunning for second place with a big total over the downtrodden Exiles.

They will certainly not want to leave their play-off place in the balance for the final day of the regular season, which features a ding-dong derby against the league leaders Northampton.

12. Munster

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Munster are third in the Pro 12 with trips to Edinburgh and Ulster still to come in their final four fixtures, so a higher finish is not out of the question.

Anthony Foley’s men won't fear anyone in the play-offs with their experience.

11. Ulster

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Ulster are second in the table but only on points difference over Munster, who they host soon.

Injuries have been unkind to Neil Doak’s men this season,, but it has been a strong campaign in the Pro 12 that they will look to finish with the silverware they have not lifted since 2006.

10. Glasgow

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The Warriors are still top of the pile in the Pro 12 after an inactive weekend.

They look set fair for a play-off place so it is just a matter of maintaining top spot.

Their run-in features games against Cardiff and Connacht, but they can really shape the top-four standings with Ulster and Ospreys still to tackle.

9. Stade Francais

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No action for Stade this weekend as the Top 14 broke for European quarter-final weekend.

The Parisians remain third in the Top 14, two points behind Clermont Auvergne and Toulon and four clear of fourth-placed city rivals Racing Metro.

They face La Rochelle away next before entertaining a resurgent Toulouse, who hover menacingly in fifth spot, six points behind Stade.

8. Wasps

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Wasps went out of Europe beaten but unbowed after giving it a real go at Toulon.

They struggled at times to deal with the champions’ forward grunt, which brought a try for Mathieu Bastareaud to put them behind early, but when they played at pace and moved the ball wide early, they had success, with two scores for right wing Will Helu.

Fine displays from the likes of Joe Simpson and Elliot Daly signal the future promise of this Wasps team, and they can still have a say in the destiny of the Premiership title.

They have sides above them Leicester and Exeter still to play and a chance to rack up a big total against relegated London Welsh. An outside shot at the playoffs still flickers.

7. Bath

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A familiar feeling hung over Bath as they trudged off the turf in Dublin. They had won the battle but lost the war.

Mike Ford’s men did not flinch for a second from their all-court philosophy and out-scored Leinster two ties to nil in their own backyard.

But they didn’t have the nous to ally that flair with enough fortitude at the breakdown. George Ford tore Leinster open twice, once for his own score and again to feed Stuart Hooper, but the Irishmen’s quality over the ball brought the requisite riposte to the West Countrymen’s dash.

Ford perhaps showed his inexperience after the game in his assessment of Irish rugby, per the Irish Independent.

"They are good at squeezing teams and trying to milk penalties and get penalties and build a score doing that. I think Leinster did that today as Ireland did to us against England."

Ford was criticized on social media for that verdict, as the piece went on to illustrate, with one such tweet reading: 

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'Sour grapes or what from @George_Fordy , needs to listen to his father before speaking. His team gives away the pens but he complains?'

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Bath and Ford simply need to swallow this bitter pill and hope their buccaneering style can carry them into the Premiership playoffs, but it is worth remembering that they will not win any points for artistic merit.

6. Northampton

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Saints skipper Tom Wood at least found the wit to sum his team’s effort up in a comical tweet after Northampton’s 37-7 hammering by Clermont Auvergne.

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“Thanks to Clermont for inviting us to their open training session today. We've left our non contact bibs in the changing rooms #humbled.”

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It was a horror show for the English champions, but they remain free and clear at the top of the Aviva Premiership.

Their only salvation will be to repeat their title victory while Jim Mallinder’s job is to root out the cause of these European failings.

Last season, it was Leinster who ripped them apart at home. This season Racing Metro did the same at Franklin’s Gardens and now Clermont have repeated the trick, albeit on a ground where many a side has gone the same way.

5. Racing Metro

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Racing Metro were architects of their own downfall against Saracens, throwing away a winning position to succumb to a last-minute penalty.

The Parisians will be waving goodbye to both Johnny Sexton and Jamie Roberts after this season, and despite the arrival of Dan Carter, you have to wonder if the departure of two Lions in their career zeniths and their replacement by a man on a swansong European tour isn’t going to dent their ambitions of getting past this stage in Europe.

That they coughed this one up will be a major source of irritation for the Frenchmen, with Brian Moore in the Telegraph describing the result thus:

"Saracens did not so much get out of jail against Racing Métro in Paris on Sunday as escape, cross the border and find themselves in a neutral country without an extradition treaty."

With Dimitri Szarzewski dropping the ball over the line and a forward pass thwarting Juan Imhoff when clean through, if Saracens found an escape route, it was Racing who gave them the map.

The statistics, per ESPNScrum, also show where this one got away. Racing gave away 12 penalties to Saracens’ seven.

They kicked the two that provided them with point-scoring chances and missed their conversion, while the English side took six penalty pots at goal and scored with four of them.

Give even the worst darts player enough arrows and he will hit the bull’s eye at some point. The rest of the numbers make for equally befuddling reading for Racing.

Thirty-one defenders beaten to Saracens’ 11. Thirteen clean breaks to Sarries’ three. But one telltale sign is in the turnover column, where the home side suffered 19 losses of possession to the Englishmen’s 13.

Racing got mugged by a streetwise team who know these parts of European rugby like the back of their hands.

4. Leinster

Leinster were outscored two tries to nil at the Aviva, but Ian Madigan’s unerring boot ensured yet another semi-final appearance for the three-time champions. The Irish Independent’s Tony Ward was not impressed:

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Leinster won because when backs were to the wall, they put bodies on the line, which when combined with experience, home advantage and perhaps most importantly a really solid scrum, eventually squeezed them home.

A lot of good there, so why my lack of enthusiasm? It rankles when you see a Leinster backline with oodles of possession, countless passing movements, reasonable precision, yet scarcely a line-break.

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The basics are there for the Dubliners though, with solid scrum and lineout and, let’s not forget, players like Cian Healy and Sean O’Brien still to reach top speed as they build game time after injury.

They will need to find that cutting edge against Toulon in the semi-final and still have ground to make up in the Pro 12, sitting four points adrift of the top four.

3. Saracens

Saracens performed the ultimate smash and grab in Paris to dump Racing Metro out of Europe at the death of a fiery clash at Stade Yves-du-Manoir.

Sarries were staring the exit door in the face as the clock ticked into the red, until Racing ignore the warnings of referee Nigel Owens to stay upright at the breakdown.

Cometh the penalty, cometh the man with one of rugby’s biggest boots. The Guardian’s Rob Kitson probably put it best: “Sporting history is not littered with too many examples of English teams being saved from oblivion by the boot of an Argentinian.”

But save them Marcelo Bosch did.

Racing has scored the game’s only try and were in control of the match when they lost their cool as they tried to go through the phases until the final whistle. Saracens have been here before and it showed.

They may be 10 points behind Northampton in the league, but they're not prone to the sort of collapses that have pockmarked the Saints’ recent European adventures and know how to close these kind of deals.

They belittled Clermont Auvergne in last year's semi-final at Twickenham but now have to do it across La Manche in St Etienne. In truth, if the game was at Stade de Marcel Michelin, they would fancy the job less.

Neutral turf might just take the edge off that fervent Clermont crowd and play into the pragmatic hands of a seasoned Saracens outfit.

2. Clermont Auvergne

Wild inconsistency remains a hallmark of this Clermont team, but, unluckily for Northampton, it was a weekend of the sublime rather than the ridiculous from Les Jaunards.

Clermont blew the Saints to smithereens, 37-7, leading 27-0 at half-time and, in the eyes of the Guardian’s Michael Aylwin, making a mockery of the travails of the French national team under Philippe Saint-Andre:

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Now the very club where the France coach made his name as an embodiment of French flair in the 80s and 90s continues the damage to that reputation by dissociation from his sterile national team. Philippe Saint-André regularly complains about the foreign players in the French league, but Clermont are a side teeming with Frenchmen.

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A man-of-the-match display from Clermont’s English full-back Nick Abendanon also promoted the ex-Bath man into the Steffon Armitage club of players touted as worthy of a bending of England’s domestic-only selection policy. Aylwin added:

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Just as he [Stuart Lancaster] starts to get his head around the idea of considering Steffon Armitage for his World Cup squad...along comes Nick Abendanon putting in yet another performance simply reeking of the exceptional.

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Abendanon carved a beautiful outside break to set Wesley Fofana up for a try before ripping the ball off Saint’s George Pisi and sprinting the length of the field for a try of his own.

The South African-born No. 15 has been on fire all season for the perennial bridesmaids of European rugby and would doubtless love the chance to marry his expansive style to the vision and verve of George Ford in a white shirt.

Whether he gets the chance remains down to Lancaster.

1. Toulon

Toulon regain top spot after another quarter-final win that sees the Top 14 leaders safely into the semi-finals.

Their victory over Wasps wasn’t a one-sided affair, with the Englishmen mounting a decent challenge and finding space out wide against the French defence.

But Toulon’s forward power was key, and while never comfortable, they were always in control.

They will play Leinster at Stade Velodrome, a ground they have never lost at in Europe. But they did suffer a reverse there against Toulouse in their recent Top 14 meeting.