Why this is the most consequential Premiership round yet

The Premiership wanted intrigue, the fans wanted jeopardy, and this weekend both thirsts will be quenched. From a calendar perspective, the league is in uncharted waters – never before has there been a complete Six Nations hiatus – and although that provides welcome respite for players and coaches before the business end of a gruelling season, it adds further pressure to a Premiership round that is shaping up like few in recent memory.

Ten points currently separate seventh-placed Leicester – semi-finalists last season – from leaders Northampton with erratic Bristol only four points behind the Tigers in eighth. Saracens, the reigning champions, are sixth and with only two sides, Gloucester and Newcastle, realistically out of the running, the hunt for those top four spots is well and truly on.

Data compiled by Oval, the Premiership’s official statisticians, show the enormity of the stakes this weekend. Oval use a machine-learning model to predict results, accounting for the quality and cohesion of players, as well as a team’s form and style. Since the league began publishing the model’s predictions at the start of last season, it has selected the correct winner in 70 per cent of matches. That may sound underwhelming, but in a league as evenly poised as the Premiership, it is an achievement. Last season, the model picked more winners than any of the 8,000-odd fans making predictions on the league’s app.

Like any algorithm, sometimes Oval’s gives short shrift to an underdog. Last February, it gave Richard Wigglesworth’s Leicester, languishing in eighth, just an eight per cent chance of reaching the semi-finals. Wigglesworth drove a coach and horses through that projection, with Leicester winning six consecutive games to surge into the play-offs. However, the model gave Sale a strong chance of making the final from day one after the signing of George Ford and they duly obliged but lost to Saracens.

Oval currently reckons the top seven teams all have at least a 25 per cent chance of making the semis and that this weekend will have a monumental impact. “This round has some of the highest leverage that we have ever seen for Premiership rugby,” Ben Mackriell, Oval’s managing director, told Telegraph Sport. “It’s rare to see a weekend in any tournament where every single fixture has this big an effect on the play-offs.”

The least exciting fixture on paper is Northampton against Newcastle: top of the league at home to the winless, bottom team. In the likely scenario that Saints are victorious, their current 86 per cent chance of making the top four will probably nudge over 90 per cent (depending on the margin of victory). But should they suffer an infamous defeat, they could end up lower than 70 per cent, if results elsewhere go against them. In other words, the game has more than 20 per cent of a play-off place riding on it for Saints.