Loose Pass: ‘Classy’ URC forces Premiership to ‘panic’ and ailing Super Rugby makes ‘staggering’ decision
Split with Steve Diamond and Super Rugby Pacific.
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the kick-off in England, the red card debate and peculiar competition choices…
The Aldi league?
Newcastle coach Steve Diamond likened his search for incoming players at the right price to shopping at Aldi last week, but as the Premiership hoves into view on the calendar among a hubbub of reports that its administrators are mooting a merger with the United Rugby Championship, you’re slightly left wondering if the Premiership has not become a more cost-effective version of other, better tournaments as well.
Steve Diamond still ‘shopping in Aldi’ as Newcastle boss provides insight into Falcons’ recruitment
It’s not a patch on the colour and vibrancy of the Top 14, for example, but that the Celtic cousins and their Italian and South African counterparts have also managed to conjure up something at least as classy and interesting appears to have set some panicky consolidation plans into action.
The plans, for a huge variety of reasons, are likely to be non-starters. But there is little escaping the fact that English rugby at both international level and club level, is struggling to find its way. The RFU has cut 42 jobs despite selling the Twickenham naming rights to Allianz for 100m. The salary cap in the Premiership has been raised again this year, but clubs have much smaller squads and many are not spending their allowance because they simply don’t have it.
It makes for a competitive league – the competition’s biggest selling point currently – but the black numbers required on operating bottom lines in order for clubs to grow obstinately persist in their absence. The new professional game agreement means that although club weekends and international weekends overlap far less than they used to, the demands on England players under contract are likely to be similar at least. As Exeter coach Rob Baxter noted: “…to get a bit of extra money clubs have got to give up more control. It doesn’t sound like a completely aligned game in this country and that’s probably how it’s going to feel for a little bit.”
But what will hurt so many is the number of English players opting to jump across the channel. The Top 14 has always been more awash with money for a number of reasons stretching far beyond the generosity of the respective benefactors at the clubs, but it used to be that playing for your country or striving to do so stopped such an exodus. Now, in the wake of the re-bearing that happened after Wasps, Worcester and London Irish all went to the wall, the potential on offer in England has started to become a little cut-price.
The Premiership needs a good season and it could do with providing a European winner – assuming that the European Cup remains the pinnacle of all things, which is also currently not a given. Otherwise, England’s league risks being left on a shelf.
Shades of red
Three of last year’s tournament finals saw red cards, none of them for any sort of act of gratuitous or red-misted violence, all of them for slightly mis-timed or mis-judged tackles.
Despite the rules being an obvious PR attempt at ensuring that rugby is perceived as becoming safer, the effect on the game as a spectacle and as a contest is starting to wear down all the protagonists. Premiership coaches this week also voiced a general concern over the red card rules for head contact, noting that other sports such as rugby league and NFL have ensured that players can be expelled from the field of play without it affecting their team.
The recent 20-minute card trial which allows a player red-carded to be replaced but only after 20 minutes has proved successful in Super Rugby, but concerns have also been voiced that such leniency renders careless head contacts more likely, or that players may not seek to avoid them with better tackle technique.
“I believe there should potentially be a different colour card (for head contact), because if I punch somebody or a player punches a player, I believe it should be a straight red and he should not come back into the game,” said Bath coach Johan Van Graan, who saw his team reduced to 14 men for most of last season’s Premiership final after Beno Obano was sent off. “However, if there’s a collision and the player gets it wrong by three centimetres, I do believe we as a game want to see 15 on 15, so I believe a player – or a different player – should be allowed to come back.
“It’s a dynamic sport and players do get it wrong. (Safety is) something we’ve got to keep growing the game but the beauty of rugby is big collisions, scrums, mauls, so having the balance between the two.”
It’s a tough one to get right, but with the speed of the game not decreasing, nor the number of collisions, an increase in disruptive red cards is only ever more likely. As for safety, it’s long since been proven that the real damage to brains is caused by the repeated low-level bangs rather than the occasional one. The red card probably needs a re-think.
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Formatting problems
It’s no coincidence that the two tournaments which have tinkered with their format the most over the past few years are the ones sinking further into relative obscurity.
The European Champions Cup format has recovered slightly from that dog’s dinner of a format in which it was possible to win one game from four and still qualify, but the competitive balance is still well off. It was dropped by broadcaster TNT for its new cycle; some believe that this might end up being a fatal blow for a competition that, in its heyday, was unmatchable for colour, quality and intensity.
But Super Rugby is not far behind. That the loser of a quarter-final may now be a semi-finalist because of seeding is staggering, and instantly renders at least one of the quarter-finals close to meaningless. Super Rugby is also a long, long way from where it used to be; unlike the European Cup, it seems not to be finding a coherent way back.