Loose Pass: Champions Cup home sweep and the Premiership's future
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with home advantage and the Premiership’s future…
Feeling too much at home
Not that it wasn’t a good weekend of competitive rugby, but Loose Pass cannot help but notice that were the winners of last weekend’s ties to be bolded up on a word doc, every single team on the home side of the draw would be highlighted.
The behind story is a little more complex: Exeter, La Rochelle and Saracens all had to come from behind, with the former two leaving it extremely late. But down in South Africa both ties were done and dusted by the hour mark, while Leinster, who now seem to play more games in the national stadium than the national team each year, rarely seemed unable to ease away from Ulster despite the latter’s tenacity.
The point here is not to knock the winners, who all deserved and earned their wins. The point is to look back at last year and remember how much fun it was when teams had a second-leg home tie to redress the balance. This particularly applies to both Harlequins and Munster, who were given real bum deals in the form of tickets to South Africa – particularly harsh on the former, who had already made the trip down under once in the pool stages.
But it will be quite harsh on the South African teams too, with both surviving teams now heading up to Europe at short notice on Easter weekend for their quarter-finals. In the games in Durban and Cape Town, both home sides quite clearly took their foot off the gas late on, not something which would have been an option had they faced the return leg.
It’s been banged on about before, but the format of the Champions Cup is currently deeply flawed. Home advantage is clearly worth earning, but the random nature of the pool stage can offer very uneven ways of getting there, while the addition of South African teams creates nightmare scenarios for logistic managers and tired players alike. And don’t get us started on the bright spark who thought that scheduling the quarter-finals on Easter weekend, leaving away supporters with barely four days to get holiday-inflated price budgets and travel plans together, would be a sympathetic idea for us paying punters. It would be no huge surprise were the four home quarter-finalists to progress this weekend, just as all the home teams did last weekend.
What would the alternative be? Well, a better pool stage for one thing, not one where – as Montpellier did – a team can win one out of four games, very obviously using at least one of those games for squad rotation, then flex their not inconsiderable squad muscles to come within an ace of a quarter-final. Had Montpellier triumphed in extra time Exeter, they would have been in the quarter-finals having, in 80-minute terms, played five matches in the tournament and won only one.
But – and this has been said before but we reckon the weekend past just emphasises it more – wouldn’t it be awesome to just have two-legged ties all the way through? No chance for rotation there, peril at every turn, excitement and tension for all and a decent window for planning for the travelling fan. Most pertinently, the home advantage for South African teams, or for teams hosting South African ones, would be evened out spectacularly.
It needs improvement. The addition of South African teams has enriched the competition in rugby terms, but has created immense challenges for athletes who are already asked an awful lot of. The pool stages only make sense after the games, the knockout ties are too predictable, fans are being asked too much of. European rugby’s shining jewel of a tournament needs a good polish.
England’s structural problems run deep
“This league!” exclaimed commentator Nick Mullins earlier in the season as yet another Premiership match reached a wide-eyed breathless climax. It’s been a good year for the casual rugby fan in terms of watching the Premiership: teams are scoring tries for fun, there are some outrageously skilful moments and plenty of tension and close matches. With perhaps the exception of Saracens, each team can credibly be predicted to lose each weekend.
This league indeed. It is, of course, also two teams short because of grave financial mismanagement, with the loss of a third, London Irish, only a venture capitalist’s mood swing away. Rumours continue to abound that Newcastle simply can’t afford to be in the Premiership any more. It is the breeding ground for the English national team, which looked well off the pace in the Six Nations. And now there is a growing number of players looking across the channel or further afield for the riches on offer. Or perhaps the simple stability.
The RFU and Premiership Rugby are still negotiating a new agreement for governance of the professional game next year. Both need to move fast and to accept that although the Premiership has advanced in quality, the framework behind it is not conducive to balancing out players’ interests. There are still too many games tucked away behind international weekends, not enough of a financial mass to make it attractive to the world’s finest, arcane regulations allowing players to move where he could be best rewarded but only at the price of his international career.
The Premiership has huge potential, but the foundation needs an update.
