It has not happened very often. Just once in the past 20 years, to be precise. Winning a single trophy is hard enough but English clubs hoisting aloft both the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup in the same season would be a proper rarity. Other than the Covid-afflicted year of 2020 when Exeter Chiefs and Bristol Bears prevailed in mostly empty stadiums, the last time there was a Premiership double was in May 2004.
Back then Wasps and Harlequins were the happy couple, beating Toulouse and Montferrand respectively. This week also features two Anglo-French finals with Northampton facing Bordeaux-Bègles in the main event and Bath tackling Lyon in Friday night’s amuse-bouche. A measure of the challenge facing the English duo is that French clubs have hoovered up seven of the past eight available trophies, with South Africa collecting the other.
