Opinion: The crazy Premiership is entertaining the masses, let’s embrace it
Fin Smith celebrating Northampton's Premiership final win in 2024 with an inset of Henry Pollock
The Gallagher Premiership has understandably been the whipping boy of the English sporting landscape since 2022, as the unprecedented collapse of three teams in one season plunged the league into a genuine existential crisis.
It’s been a rocky road ever since for the domestic competition. Promotion and relegation remain out of the question with only one of the 12 Championship sides able to meet the high demands of stadium criteria, which only exist in this sport, and elsewhere, big blowout scores suggest the quality across the league is dipping.
This weekend alone, Saracens put 75 points past Newcastle Falcons, but they aren’t alone in the mammoth margins either. Gloucester, beaten 38-19 themselves on Saturday by Harlequins, stuffed Exeter Chiefs 79-17 (it could have been in the 90s as well).
Huge tallies are becoming the norm, too. Leicester Tigers beat Sale Sharks 44-34, two weeks on from pummelling Harlequins 40-7, Northampton Saints beat Bristol Bears 48-31, and then the Bears went on to complete the league-double over table-topping Bath in Cardiff with a 36-14.
It’s absolutely crazy at the minute, but we should be embracing it not tearing it down.
This new version of the Premiership is doing the business of rebuilding the English game’s image, and it’s taking it back to the top table of European rugby once again.
Are you not entertained?
‘Are you not entertained?’ Cried Maximus in the arena.
That’s exactly what the Premiership is doing, it’s entertaining the masses.
Yes, it’s not the gladiatorial contests we’ve seen in the past, the great Leicester teams of old, or the powerful Exeter and Saracens sides of days gone by, but this is a modern era of rugby.
Some might consider it to be “utter woke nonsense”, but it’s unbelievable viewing for the general fan or even a new fan.
TNT Sports have been so entertained by the rising attacking outputs that they’ve signed on for another five seasons until the end of the 2030/31 season.
Around that, viewing figures are back on the rise, with this season posting an 11% increase on this time last year and a 22% increase on the 2022/23 season.
The biggest telling point of all is cash. But in an era of declining TV deals across most sports other than football, it is understood that the new deal with TNT is significantly larger than the current one, which will greatly help the clubs, too.
This is something that needs to be celebrated.
The new Joué Joué style of balls-to-the-wall attack is bringing people back to rugby, which will again pump money back into the clubs.
Increased TV ratings are one thing, but the change to creating big events is also drawing in the crowds.
80,634 turned out for Harlequins’ annual ‘Big Game’ event this year, and only this weekend 51,095 ventured to the Principality for Bristol v Bath and 60,000 watched Harlequins’ clash with Gloucester.
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But, the big one for this is the showpiece Premiership Final, and today it was confirmed that it has sold out before the end of the regular season for the first time in the competition’s history.
It’s fair to say fans probably are entertained.
Quality
Another thing thrown at the Premiership, with these blowout scores, is if it’s actually that good a league compared to the rest of Europe.
I’d say it’s possibly the best.
Northampton, a team languishing outside of the top four after an inconsistent league season, have just beaten a Leinster side containing 12 of Andy Farrell’s British and Irish Lions squad, a double World Cup-winning Springbok and an All Blacks hero to make the Champions Cup final.
Fellow Premiership side Bath have also reached a European final, and probably come into it as favourites as well.
Two English sides in European finals, is that a good enough sign of the Premiership’s quality?
Yes, the European competitions might need a reform, but those two teams have probably got to where they are because of the quality of the Premiership.
As the opening spiel showed, everyone can beat everyone. Since returning from its Six Nations hiatus and Premiership Rugby Cup block, the Premiership has seen Gloucester beat Exeter, who beat Northampton, who beat Bristol, who beat Bath, who beat Harlequins, who beat Saracens, who beat Leicester, who beat Sale, who beat Newcastle.
This is surely a sign of a strong league.
Bath are, of course, the runaway leaders, but the race for a home semi-final is well and truly on. Leicester sit in pole position, but Bristol, Sale and Saracens are all in the mix, while Gloucester and Harlequins also have an outside shot at the top four as well.
The English league is by no means perfect, though. Promotion and relegation have virtually gone out of the window despite there still being systems in place for it, and it’s far too easy to qualify for the Champions Cup, with eight of the 10 clubs involved entering the premier competition.
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But let’s look at things with a bit of optimism, ey?
Test match futures
Something that has been thrown at the Premiership in recent times is if it’s creating Test match animals, but frankly, that’s just utter hogwash.
The Premiership doesn’t need to be fire-and-brimstone to develop Test players, it’s already building players for the next stage.
Just look at the meteoric rise of Henry Pollock. This time last year, he was named the U20s Six Nations Player of the Year; now he’s going on a Lions tour.
The Saints star has also all but come into Farrell’s squad off the back of his club appearances, too, not his Test stuff.
He’s a product of this new Premiership, where players are afforded the freedom to try new things in attack. In what some have dubbed the golden era of domestic rugby, would a 20-year-old flanker have been deployed on the wing and allowed to kick through and score? I highly doubt it.
Pollock isn’t alone in that either. The likes of Exeter’s Paul Brown-Bampoe and Bath’s Ciaran Donoghue are by-products of this new Premiership era and will no doubt win Test caps in the future.
In the here and now, Sale youngster Asher Opoku-Fordjour has already impressed at Test level and will undoubtedly do so again this summer with England.
And, I’ve not even mentioned the tally of 15 players headed for Australia this summer, led by Saracens’ Maro Itoje.
So much for not creating Test match animals.
This crazy Premiership is doing the business, and long may it continue.