Ahead of the new Champions Cup season, here are 12 Players and coaches who’ve helped define Europe’s premier club competition since it began in 1995
The latest edition of the European Champions Cup kicks off on Friday 16 October, as reigning champions Bordeaux Bègles open their title defence against Gloucester at Kingsholm.
The competition’s come a long way since it kicked off on 31 October 1995, with just 3,000 watching Toulouse beat Romania’s Farul Constanţa 54-10 in the first game of what was then known as the Heineken Cup. English and Scottish clubs didn’t enter that first tournament, which featured 12 teams from five countries.
Since then, some bona fide greats have performed heroics in the nearest the club game gets to Test rugby. The dozen players we’ve chosen here have all made their mark in the competition and deserve to be listed as icons – they’re what Europe’s current crop of stars are aspiring to this season.
Brad Barritt (Saracens)
(ODD ANDERSEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Maro Itoje, Owen Farrell and Alex Goode might have won European Player of the Year in the seasons Saracens won the Champions Cup but Brad Barritt was captain in all of them – 2016, 2017 and 2019. And, in 2018, the centre showed his mettle when he played in a quarter-final just days after surgery on a broken cheekbone.
Nicknamed ‘The Terminator’, he lost on that occasion. But he was back to reclaim the title in 2019, winning Man of the Match against Leinster.
Leo Cullen (Leinster)
(David Rogers/Getty Images)
Leinster have won four Champions Cups and Leo Cullen has been involved in the lot, as well as four losing finals. He was the first player to captain a side to three wins in the tournament, bringing up the hat-trick in 2012 before retiring in 2014.
As a player, the former lock was in the Leicester side that lost the final in 2007 before returning home and taking some of the Welford Road work ethic back to Leinster – with impressive results.
He subsequently joined the Leinster staff and became the first man to win Europe’s premier trophy as a player and a coach when his province beat Racing 92 in the 2018 final. That was the last time Leinster lifted the Champions Cup, and Cullen will be desperate to get his hands on the trophy in his final season in charge – especially after losing five of the last eight finals.
Christophe Deylaud (Toulouse)
(David Rogers/Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive)
No one can take it away from a player who is the first to do anything and Deylaud, fly-half in a Toulouse team containing Thomas Castaignède, their current head coach Ugo Mola and Emile Ntamack, was the man to grab his piece of history in the 1996 final.
The French side, in the first finale of the Champions Cup, were tied at 15-15 with Cardiff after 80 minutes in front of 21,800 at the Arms Park.
As the added time drifted on, the teams were locked at 18-18 before Cardiff prop Andrew Lewis was caught by referee David McHugh with his hands on the ball at a ruck.
Deylaud’s kick, from left of the posts, was a simple one but it was the first to win a European title and Toulouse had a slice of history. Deylaud later went on to coach at Agen and Bayonne.
Antoine Dupont (Toulouse)
(David Rogers/Getty Images)
No rugby list is complete these days without Antoine Dupont, a Champions Cup winner in 2021 and 2024, and Man of the Match in Toulouse’s 31-22 win over Leinster in 2024.
In that epic final in north London, the No 9 showed his full array of skills, kicking off both feet, making two 50-22s, four turnovers and try-saving tackles. His performance was all the more remarkable as he had missed the Six Nations to play sevens ahead of the Paris Olympics. TV pundit Benjamin Kayser said: “His highlights reel would take all day. In that match he pretty much did everything.”
It added to his first title, a 22-17 win v La Rochelle at Twickenham in 2021.
Anthony Foley (Munster)
(John Gichigi/Getty Images)
Anthony Foley captained Munster to their first Champions Cup win in 2006, a 23-19 win over Biarritz in Cardiff that brought an emotional end to a run of agonising knockout defeats. The No 8 missed just one of Munster’s first 78 games in the tournament but was dropped ahead of the run to the 2008 triumph and retired that season.
Foley joined the Munster academy and then became forwards coach in 2011. But, like his life, his death will be forever entwined with the Champions Cup. It was on a trip to Paris, preparing Munster to play Racing in October 2016, that Foley died in his sleep, aged just 42. Sky Sports repeated the 2006 final as a tribute.
Austin Healey (Leicester Tigers)
(Jamie McDonaldAllsport/Getty Images)
Younger readers might know Austin Healey as a pundit who talks a very good game, but he could also play a very good one back in the day.
Scrum-half, fly-half, full-back and wing were all covered off by Healey and he did a turn at both nine and ten when Andy Goode went off in the 2001 final that ended in a 34-30 win for Leicester v Stade Français at Parc des Princes. Healey made the 79th-minute try for Leon Lloyd that gave Tigers a two-point lead.
A year later, Healey started at fly-half in the 15-9 win over Munster, scoring in the 59th minute and being named Man of the Match for the second successive final. The game is notable for the ‘Hand of Back’ incident – but Tigers fans will tell you Healey was the difference.
Rob Howley (Wasps)
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Scrum-half Rob Howley’s intervention in the 2004 final at Twickenham was brilliant and a reward for tenacity. But no one talks about ‘doing a Howley’, so, over two decades later, we’ll give him top billing here. ‘Doing a Poitrenaud’, however, has been in rugby’s vocabulary ever since.
Wasps and Toulouse were locked at 20-20 with two minutes to go when Howley speculatively poked the ball down the left touchline, where Clément Poitrenaud tried to escort it into safety. But the ball bobbled around without going into touch and Howley pounced to score. It looked a lost cause but Howley proved otherwise and Warren Gatland’s Wasps had their first European triumph.
Isa Nacewa (Leinster)
(Stu Forster/Getty Images)
“Leinster’s greatest import who had a profound effect on the whole organisation and changed our way of thinking,” is how Johnny Sexton described Isa Nacewa, an Aucklander who pitched up in Dublin in 2008.
Nacewa played mostly at wing or full-back in winning four Champions Cups – playing the 2011 final versus Northampton with a broken shin bone – and a Challenge Cup in two stints with the province. Leo Cullen persuaded him to return to Leinster in 2015 to help rebuild the side and three years later Nacewa kicked the winning penalty as Leinster beat Racing 15-12 to win a fourth title.
Guy Novès (Toulouse)
(David Rogers/Getty Images)
Guy Novès (who went on to coach the France national team) guided Toulouse to four European titles, including the first one in 1996 and victories in 2003, 2005 and 2010.
The former France wing hit the headlines after the 2005 final at Murrayfield, an 18-12 win v Stade Français. Novès was escorted to a room deep in the stadium after a dust-up with stewards at the final whistle. He said he was trying to get his son and a club official onto the pitch but police intervened and locked him up.
“I was surrounded by 17 police officers. I felt like a hooligan,” said Novès, who vowed to win the cup again – which he did five years later.
Ronan O’Gara (Munster and La Rochelle)
(Warren Little/Getty Images)
A two-time winner as a player with Munster, in 2006 and 2008, and voted European player of the first 15 years of the Champions Cup, Ronan O’Gara emulated that as a coach when he helped La Rochelle to titles in 2022 and 2023 after epic finals with Leinster in Marseille and Dublin.
The fly-half amassed 1,365 points in the Champions Cup in 110 tournament appearances, and the two he kicked against Gloucester in 2003 capped the contest known as ‘The Miracle Match’.
Munster needed to beat the West Country side by at least 27 points, with four tries, to advance to the quarter-finals. Gloucester arrived flying in the Premiership but O’Gara’s conversion of John Kelly’s try at the death brought a 33-6 win and Munster qualified. The Irishmen then won 20-7 at Leicester but went out to Toulouse in the last four.
Johnny Sexton (Leinster)
(Ben Radford/Corbis via Getty Images)
Johnny Sexton conquered Europe four times with Leinster but it was the 2011 final, against Northampton in Cardiff, when he put his stamp on the competition. The Irish province had beaten Leicester 19-16 in 2009, but the No 10 inspired a comeback two years later to rank with anything the tournament has seen.
Saints led 22-6 at the break before Sexton tore a strip off his side in the dressing room. He invoked the spirit of Liverpool against AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League final, when they came back from 3-0 down to win on penalties. Leinster blew Saints away in the second period to win 33-22, Sexton contributing 28 points all told in a performance that still resonates.
Jonny Wilkinson (Toulon)
(John Berry/Getty Images)
Before Jonny Wilkinson joined Toulon in 2009, the club was punching well below its weight and wage bill. The 2003 World Cup winner changed all that, turning them into a European giant with his relentless work ethic and leadership. He became a local hero, was married to wife Shelley by the mayor in 2013, and is still revered in the city.
And no wonder. The fly-half lifted the Champions Cup with Toulon in 2013 and 2014, scoring 24 points across final wins over Clermont and Saracens. He was named European Player of the Year.
“He is Jonny of Toulon, he’s the King of Toulon,” said club owner Mourad Boudjellal.
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