Loose Pass: RWC comedown and changing of the guard

Colin Newboult

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the global fixture calendar, Australia’s new Kiwi and a symbol of change…

We need less to get more

Is it just us, or is there just a little too much rugby at the moment? You couldn’t fault the World Cup or the action, but to get into the European Cup two weeks later feels just a little bit more of a burden than it should do.

And then, having forgotten about it because of the aforementioned competition, to be reminded that the club season this year still has nearly eight months to run also felt a bit…. Uuurrgh.

The European Cup, once such a highlight for the northern club calendar, seems especially wedged in. It’s hard to justify the tournament being one of ultimate prestige for Europe when a sprinkling of the star players are still on holiday.

The Six Nations is likely to be dogged by fatigue and injury, especially from England and Wales respectively, while the hole into which Saracens have dug themselves is all the more deep for it being a post-World Cup year. As stated last week, it’s poor form to breach the salary cap, but if ever there was a season in which we could empathise, this coming one would be it.

European players who went to the World Cup will have, by the time the season ends in July, been at it for 12 months – a few will have had a four-week break, but not many. That’s an impossible workload for anybody.

The Premiership may be the only top-level tournament in the history of sport to have the star players playing in fewer than half of the fixtures by the time of its drawn-out end. The European Cup looks set, this season once again, to be a fiefdom of Irish and one or two expensively-assembled French teams.

Who do you think will win the Premiership? I’m not bothered. The same goes for the European Cup. As for the Pro 14… I’m still trying to work out whether the South African sides are Currie Cup or Super Rugby level. Having just come down from the highs of Japan 2019, it’s tough to get excited about a mid-table clash in England in November, or about a clash between a struggling French club side and Italy’s game – but limited – European Cup contingent, or the trip from Newport to Port Elizabeth for a match played in an empty stadium.

None of us are too happy about the CVC salami-style takeover of the game but, if they are to snap up all the tournaments one-by-one, there could be a tremendous service rendered: bring pressure to bear on the factions who run tournaments and get them to sort out a sensible calendar with a sensible workload for players and fans. Right now, even for the hardiest fan, it all seems a little too much.

The second Kiwi

So Australia have turned external again. Not all too surprising, considering the dearth of experience within Australia’s coaching set-up, but we’re surprised at this one.

Is the selection of a coach with no Test experience for the Wallabies role a measure of a star rising? Or is it acknowledgement of how far, in terms of prestige, the attractiveness of the Australia job has fallen?

It’s likely a bit of both but, with no disrespect to Dave Rennie, it’s more the latter. Raelene Castle said Rennie was the standout candidate but, considering the lack of Test rugby on his CV, it seems he might have been the only candidate.

It also seems as though the relationship Rennie forged with Scott Johnson during their tenures in Scotland may have been important. Johnson – who did not see eye to eye with Michael Cheika – has had much input into the decision for Cheika’s successor, and all the evidence suggests Rennie was his choice.

But Rennie steps into the firing line, with Johnson having just as much say in the hiring of the support staff the former Glasgow boss will have to work with. Australia get a coach who has nurtured success at New Zealand U20 level, Super Rugby level and – certainly in terms of achievement relative to his predecessors – at PRO14 level. The star is indeed rising.

But Rennie’s New Zealand origins, his lack of Test experience and his ties to the not universally-loved Johnson will all count against him when the going gets tough and the notoriously vicious Australian media cranks up the heat. It’s a high-risk pick.

All change in England

If ever you needed to know how rugby has changed in England over the past 20 years, just look at the Premiership table. The bottom quintet of Leicester, Bath, Quins, Wasps and Saracens were five of the top six of the 1999 Allied Dunbar Premiership – the first four of those have been ever-presents at the pinnacle of English rugby for decades.

This year it looks a real risk for Leicester especially, as Saracens’ draconian points penalty is not an insurmountable gap.

A real risk for a team that, 20 years ago, was on its way to its second championship in a row. But should the Tigers’ woes continue, expect the arguments for ring-fencing to pop up sooner, rather than later.

Loose Pass conpiled by Lawrence Nolan

Australia