Aviva Premiership looks like an East Midlands final

First published in The Rugby Paper on 07 November 2010 and reproduced with their consent


With the Aviva Premiership season almost one third through, it’s timely to have a look at how things are stacking up, and how the pre-season predictions are doing.

The first, and biggest surprise, is the performance of Exeter Chiefs.  I put my hand up for getting them totally wrong, and I’m in very good company in that camp.  Even after they’d beaten Gloucester in their first game in the big time I still believed that the analysts would rumble them and that, come Christmas, they’d be relegation certainties.  I’m delighted to have been wrong, and with the discreet squad building that they’re doing, it seems they’re confident they can cement their Premiership place for next season.  They may have a limited game plan but it’s working, and they also have the most important qualities in top-flight rugby: team spirit and commitment.

That means that Leeds and Newcastle are the current relegation candidates, with Sale teetering on the brink of being drawn into the dogfight.  Last season Leeds did their Lazarus impersonation, and survived after being seemingly dead and buried.  Who’s to say they won’t do that again, but they just don’t seem to have the same spark this time around.  Having had the misfortune to watch the Leeds v Sale encounter I have no hesitation in saying that if that is as good as they can do, I’d be happy to see both of them drop through the trapdoor – it was a game designed to give rugby a bad name.  My hunch is that Newcastle will manage to turn things round and leave the other two to stage a latter day version of the War of the Roses, with the winner being too hard to call.

At the other end of the table I have no hesitation in saying that Northampton Saints are the best side in the Premiership, despite being a point behind London Irish at this stage.  It may be unfair but I just can’t see Toby Booth’s men as potential champions – the memory of how they fell apart last season refuses to go away.  Saints, on the other hand, seem to have progressed from last season and have to be worthy favourites to go one better and at least make the Premiership Final.

Beneath those two the surprise packet has to be Gloucester.  They started the season in tentative style and the fickle Glaws natives were getting very restless, but four wins on the bounce – admittedly three of them were at home – has bumped them up to third spot, one point ahead of Sarries who showed a very brittle side to their character when getting thumped at home by Exeter.  Not too many people saw that one coming!

Then we have Leicester and Bath.  Tigers will come good in the second half of the season – it’s just one of the immutable laws of English rugby that they do.  Bath, however, seem to have problems.  Last season they played an exciting brand of rugby, scoring at will, but without Butch James they’ve lost the knack of scoring tries: unless something changes dramatically they could well find themselves struggling to make next season’s Heineken Cup.

Quins and Wasps find themselves in the bottom six at this stage of the campaign and it’s hard to say anything other than that’s where they deserve to be.  Of course, a good run of results can still change things dramatically, but there has been precious little evidence that is just around the corner for either club.

At this stage Saints and Leicester are my reasonably confident choices to fill two of the play-off spots, with Irish, Gloucester and Sarries to fight it out for the other two semi-final places.  I fancy an all East Midland final at Twickenham is on the cards.   

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The news that James Hook is leaving Ospreys rounds off a rotten week for the West Wales region, coming as it does on the news of Gav’s departure over the bridge.  It brings home once again the problems associated with trying to keep a squad of international players happy – they all want to play in their preferred position, and if that doesn’t happen as often as they like, then they pack their bags and go.

What price now Warren Gatland’s words about preferring his star names to stay at home?  While only one or two of them are abroad then the implied threat not to select them can work, but once there’s a critical mass of players in the Top 14 or the Aviva Premiership it will be hard to ignore their claims.  Eventually the WRU will surely have to dip its hand into its pocket and reach a financial settlement with the clubs who employ their stars – if they want to deprive a club of a top player, especially for mere money-spinning matches like the Autumn internationals, then those clubs need to be compensated, just as the RFU now does.