Nine wishes for the rugby season – and why Leinster need another heartbreak
The Gallagher Premiership returns this weekend and thus there is no better time to think about what I would like to see most in the season ahead.
A new Premiership champion
There have been five champions in five years in the Gallagher Premiership. The turnover of titles can be interpreted as a sign of the league’s weakness in that no one club has been able to exert the type of dominance Toulouse have managed in the Top 14. Yet, however much there is to admire about clubs who build a dynasty, boredom can quickly set in when a club wins year after year — see the latter part of Saracens’ hegemony or Manchester City’s iron grip over the Premier League.
Give me a bit of chaos theory any day. Certainly I would not discount Sale nor Bath from becoming the sixth champions in six years.
Promotion play-off to go ahead
This is less a wish than a sinking feeling in my gut that somehow in some way the drawbridge is going to be pulled up at the last minute. In theory, any Championship club who finish top of the table and who have a capacity of at least 5,000, which should encompass at least four clubs, will be eligible to play the Premiership’s bottom-placed team for the right to compete in the top flight.
Not only would this high-stakes match be appointment viewing, but it would put to bed once and for all the theory that the Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby will make up some arbitrary rule about the height of urinals to stop a Championship team from entering the elite. I am not holding my breath.
Barbeary kicks on
English rugby struggles to produce genetic freaks with in-built gain line-breaking ability, unless they import them from elsewhere. Barbeary is the exception that proves the rule. The converted Bath back-rower carries with real violence into and through heavy traffic. This is hardly a well-kept secret, but a combination of unfortunately timed injuries and suspensions have ensured he remains uncapped at international level.
The emergence of Chandler Cunningham-South has given the English back row a significant power upgrade but adding in a fit and firing Barbeary could be a game-changer.
Cheika gives Tigers their bite back
Northampton fans may be inclined to disagree but the Premiership is a stronger place when teams dread going to Mattioli Woods Welford Road, which was certainly not the case last season. The advent of heads-up, free-flowing rugby across the Premiership is to be applauded, yet rugby retains its beauty through its diversity. With their traditional emphasis on the scrum and maul, Leicester provide the shade to go with the light. And no coach is better equipped to inject a swagger into any team than Michael Cheika.
Game time for the next generation
The fate of the England Under-20s who won the title in the summer feels like a test case for how well the pathway system will function under the new Professional Game Partnership. Everyone knows that England’s best young players need game time to nurture their potential. Where and how they get it is the unresolved question. No player is entitled to start matches simply because they are precocious, but if the likes of Afolabi Fasogbon, Henry Pollock and Finn Carnduff do not break through then something somewhere has gone wrong.
Leinster’s curse continues
I have nothing against Leinster. Fine team, fine players, fine supporters. However, after three successive defeats in the Champions Cup final as well as the United Rugby Championship play-offs, it would be objectively very funny if they went undefeated all season only to lose in both the Champions Cup and United Rugby Championship finals.
‘Grow the game’ no more
I am not quite sure when and where this cliché first entered the rugby lexicon but it needs to be banned unless it is specifically accompanied by an example of how to make rugby more popular or accessible...
Broadcast ref comms
... speaking of which, the single easiest thing to do to improve the matchday experience of supporters would be to broadcast all interactions between the referee and television match official inside the stadium. At the moment, the matchday punters are treated as second-class citizens, not privy to information that television viewers enjoy. This has already been implemented in the southern hemisphere and really should have come in a long time ago in the north.
Ban ‘Sweet Caroline’
There needs to be some kind of Geneva Convention to prevent Neil Diamond from being inflicted upon us at every rugby ground.