Sport on TV: West Brom vs Chelsea, European Champions Cup Final & IPL 2017 - Dan Jones runs you through what to watch this weekend

Champions-elect | Chelsea can win the Premier League title with victory at West Brom
AFP/Getty Images
Dan Jones12 May 2017

All these finals raise my fears for a wounded pride of Lions

Clermont vs Saracens
Saturday, Murrayfield, 5pm
(BT Sport 2 & Sky Sports 3)

Koch celebrates after their victory over Munster in the Champions Cup semi-finals
David Rogers/Getty Images

For the TV Guide, this week began with Messy Monday, which was swiftly followed by Terrified Tuesday, Wonky Wednesday and Thirsty Thursday. Now here we are on Finally Accepting That We Have A Problem Friday. And so it always goes.

For Britain and Ireland’s best rugby players it was a similar story — the Messy Monday bit, anyway — because at the start of this week Warren Gatland’s 41-man Lions squad met up to collect some branded swag, do admin and pose for photos looking double-hard; easier for some (Joe Marler, below) than others (Greig ‘Wee Jimmy Krankie’ Laidlaw).

Has anyone got a problem with that? Well, yes, it turns out that they do. Specifically, Saracens and Gloucester, who haven’t quite finished with their players, thank you very much.

Tonight and tomorrow it’s the climax of the European club rugby season: starting tonight with Gloucester v Stade Francais in the European Challenge Cup Final, live from Murrayfield at 8pm (BT Sport 2 and Sky Sports 2), and continuing tomorrow afternoon with Clermont Auvergne v Saracens in the European Champions Cup Final, also live from the Edinburgh stadium, at 5pm (BT Sport 2 and Sky Sports 3).

Now, the TV Guide has done the math, and all in all there are eight Lions potentially involved across the two games: two from Gloucester and a hefty six from Saracens.

Good? Well, yes, in the sense that Europe’s best are the players you want to be sending off down to New Zealand next month.

Although with the Aviva Premiership and Guinness Pro12 play-offs still to come, the TV Guide wonders whether they’ll be carrying half the squad down to Auckland on Lions-branded towels deployed as makeshift stretchers. Is 41 players actually enough?

Actually, park that. What about these European finals? Gloucester are coming off a mixed run of form, having squeaked into the Challenge Cup Final with a win away at La Rochelle before being soundly beaten by Bath and Exeter in their final two Premiership fixtures. And, yes, Stade lost by a point to Montpellier in the Top 14 last weekend, but that was their first defeat since the start of March.

The TV Guide smells a tight match — or perhaps it’s just time we washed our jeans.

As for Saracens, the all-conquering, the mighty, the indefatigable and the actually-getting-slightly-annoying- how-good-they-are: well, it won’t be totally easy. There’s history there with Clermont, whom they met in the 2014 and 2015 semis, with one win each.

And Clermont, to their chagrin, have never won the European Cup, but the way they squeezed the life out of Leinster on their way to the final suggested this time they fancy it.

Whatever happens, the TV Guide is bracing for two days of Anglo-French warfare. Mon dieu!

Helpfully, a local Gloucestershire website this week published some common Cotswold rugby phrases in French, with the best of them ‘Bourriquet!’ (Eeyore!) and ‘Vous ne savez pas ce que vous faites!’ (You don’t know what you’re doing!) — the latter being words the TV Guide is accustomed to hearing remarkably often.

Why it’s pure folly not to root for a Chelsea win

PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images

West Brom vs Chelsea
Friday, The Hawthorns, 8pm
(Sky Sports 1)

The TV Guide, tyrannical as ever, put a special order in with Mrs TV Guide when she did the Ocado shop this week.

Besides the ordinary grocery demands (cheap Belgian lager, freeze-dried noodles, nothing else), we demanded 15 large bunches of celery, which we will be pelting at the television this evening as Chelsea go to West Brom, sniffing the win that will make them 2016-17 Premier League champions.

Can they do it? The TV Guide sees no reason why not although, hold on, here’s West Brom’s Chris Brunt making stern promises about the Baggies’ pride, ability, intentions etc, etc.

“We can’t just roll over,” Brunt said, a feeling the TV Guide knows intimately since we, too, are increasingly unable to roll in any direction, a fact that accounts for that unsightly rash of bedsores all over our back.

The bookies don’t believe a word he says. Chelsea are 4/11 on to win and heap glory upon Antonio Conte’s first season in charge, which is no more than they deserve.

N’Golo Kante has already been crowned God King Of The Football Universe, Diego Costa has scored 20 Premier League goals this season and Eden Hazard looks like he cares again. Does anyone miss Jose Mourinho now?

No, thought not. Although, speaking of Jose, if Chelsea muff their lines at The Hawthorns, he still vaguely matters, as second-placed Spurs host Manchester United on Sunday (Sky Sports 1, 4.30pm). We’ll probably watch that one either way, chewing on a celery stick and telling everyone in the vicinity that it’s negatively calorific.

Bravo, Ben! But cricket won’t be the same after IPL 2017

Gareth Copley/Getty Images

Indian Premier League
Sunday, from 11.30am
(Sky Sports 5)

When the TV Guide grows up, we’re going to be Ben Stokes: a sporting uber-being with rad tats, a ginger beard and a barely-contained fury in his eyes.

For now, though, we’ll content ourselves with watching Stokes go to town on the closing stages of the Indian Premier League.

His team, Rising Pune Supergiant, are playing the Delhi Daredevils this afternoon (3.30pm, Sky Sports 3) and then have their final regular match on Sunday, facing Kings XI at 11.30am.

Supergiant are third in the table, so Stokes (along with first-placed Mumbai Indians’ Jos Buttler and second-placed Kolkota Knight Riders’ Chris Woakes)

has every chance of being in India until the final next weekend.

By that stage the TV Guide will be a dribbling mess of excitement: a subtle change from our usual disposition, which is merely a dribbling mess.

All cricket after the IPL 2017 is basically going to be a let-down, isn’t it?

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