The 2016–17 British and Irish Cup was the eighth season of the annual rugby union competition for second tier, semi-professional clubs from Britain and Ireland. London Welsh were the defending champions having won the 2015–16 final against Yorkshire Carnegie 10–33 at Headingley Carnegie Stadium, Leeds on 10 April 2016. There have been six different winners and six different losing finalists in the seven seasons of its existence. The format of the competition is similar to last season with Scottish clubs not competing. For the second consecutive season the four Welsh teams were the reserve sides of the teams competing in the Pro12 competition instead of clubs from the Welsh Premier Division.
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Competition format.
The competition format is a pool stage followed by a knockout stage. The pool stage consists of five pools of four teams playing home and away matches. The top side in each pool, plus the three best runners-up, progress to the knockout stage. The eight quarter-finalists are ranked, with top four teams having home advantage. The four winning quarter-finalists progress to the semi-final draw. Most of the matches are played on the same weekends as the European Champions Cup and European Challenge Cup. First round matches began on 14 October 2016 and the final was held on the 21 April 2017.
Participating teams and locations.
The allocation of teams is as follows:
Pool stages.
Pool 2.
London Welsh entered liquidation on 8 December 2016 and were disqualified from the competition and their results from rounds 1 and 2 annulled.
Pool 5.
Round 6.
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Knock-out stage.
The eight qualifiers were seeded according to performance in the pool stage. The four top seeds hosted the quarter-finals against the lower seeds, in a 1 v 8, 2 v 7, 3 v 6 and 4 v 5 format. If two teams qualified from the same group they could not be drawn together despite the seeding, therefore, Jersey Reds did not play against Ulster A. The quarter-finals were held over the weekend of 10/11/12 March 2017, the semi-finals were held over the weekend of 31 March and 1 &amp; 2 April 2017 and the final was played on 21/22/23 April 2017.
Teams are ranked by:
1 – competition points (4 for a win, 2 for a draw)
2 – where competition points are equal, greatest number of wins
3 – where the number of wins are equal, aggregate points difference
4 – where the aggregate points difference are equal, greatest number of points scored
Quarter-finals.
The draw for the quarter-finals was made on 23 January 2017, with the matches to be played on the weekend of 10–13 March 2017.
Attendances.
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Individual statistics.
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Season records.
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References.
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