2018–19 European Rugby Champions Cup pool stage
The 2018–19 European Rugby Champions Cup pool stage is the first stage of the 24th season of European club rugby union, and the fifth under the European Rugby Champions Cup format. The competition involves twenty teams, across five pools of four teams, for eight quarter-final places – awarded to the five pool winners and the three top-ranked pool runners-up. The pool stage began on the weekend of 12-14 October 2018, and ended following 6 rounds of games, on the weekend of 18-20 January 2019. Seeding. The twenty competing teams  are seeded and split into four tiers, each containing five teams. For the purpose of creating the tiers, clubs are ranked based on their domestic league performances and on their qualification for the knockout phases of their championships. For example, a losing quarter-finalist would be seeded below a losing semi-finalist, even if they finished above them in the regular season. Based on these seedings, teams are placed into one of the four tiers, with the top seed clubs being put in Tier 1. The nature of the tier system means that a draw is needed to allocate two  of the three second seed clubs to Tier 1 and to allocate one of the three fourth seed clubs to Tier 2. The tiers are shown below. Brackets show each team's seeding and their league (for example, "1 Top 14" indicates the team was seeded 1st from the Top 14). Pool stage. The following restrictions will apply to the draw: The draw took place on 20 June 2018, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Teams in the same pool play each other twice, at home and away, in the group stage that begins on the weekend of 12/13/14 October 2018, and continues  through to 18/19/20 January 2019. The five pool winners and three best runners-up progress to the quarter finals. Teams are awarded group points based on match performances. Four points are awarded for a win, two points for a draw, one attacking bonus point for scoring four or more tries in a match and one defensive bonus point for losing a match by seven points or fewer. In the event of a tie between two or more teams, the following tie-breakers will be used, as directed by EPCR: (Q) denotes the team has qualified for the quarter-finals as  the pool winners (q) denotes team has at least qualified for the quarter-finals as one of the three highest-scoring second-place teams