By Alan Carter
September 14 2005

The RFU is procrastinating over the English Lions players that played on the first weekend in the Guinness Premiership. A couple of things strike me about this: The first is that, until central contracts arrive, the clubs pay their players’ wages. I accept that the players need a rest, but Premiership Rugby is a professional game and, if this season turns out to be anything like last season, all the clubs are going to need as many league points as they can get, either to stay up or get to play in HC next season.

So is it reasonable to expect the clubs to rest their players, especially if their players want to play? I think the short answer to that one is a big ‘No’.

Just to quote a highly placed RFU official “The clubs are abusing us and taking the p***, …Saying it should be up to the players to decide when they play does not wash. It’s like allowing children to decide when they go to school.”

[Reported in The Times on September 07, 2005 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,377-1768423,00.html]

It strikes me that the RFU is still run by the same old, boring people who suffer from excessive wind in their lower bowel region and the need to expel it from their bodies - the same kind of officials so beloved by Will Carling. If not exactly those people, then a similar type of people who still think that Rugby Union at the top level is played by amateurs. I’m sorry to disappoint them, but like most professional sport these days, it takes a lot of money to run a club and most clubs need a backer like Nigel Wray to thrive and survive.

The second point about this fiasco is that with the clubs playing their English Lions players, it does provide Andy Robinson with a ready made excuse if England performs badly in the Autumn Internationals or the Six Nations. Namely that “had the players been rested as the RFU wanted then England would have done better.” If England does badly, and the English coaching staff or the RFU come out with that excuse, I claim first use of it.

Harlequins have won their first two ND1 games as expected. The first game against the Pertemp Bees, a side that probably has top six ambitions in ND1, whilst Exeter lost to Plymouth Albion. If the top sides in ND1 from second down to sixth are each capable of beating each other on their day, then I would expect Harlequins almost to walk the ND1 championship on their way back to playing Premiership Rugby. Of course this assumes that Quins don’t get too complacent.

I know it is early in the season, but, after two weeks, the GP and ND1 are being led by two teams who have come nowhere and would not even be thought of as possible title challengers.

Back to Sarries, whilst this is not a review of our recent games against Wasps or Leeds, I do have several comments.

In the Wasps game, I felt we gave away too many needless penalties; our backs (with the possible exception of TC) seemed to lack penetration in the centre which led to a lot of cut-out passes to the wings. Something which Wasps soon learnt to read and take advantage of. Whilst disappointed with the result, as some people said to me after the game, we usually lose to Wasps away by a bigger margin, and we were still in it almost right up to end.

Overall in the LDH the two better sides, or should I say the sides that made fewer mistakes, won their games. What we saw from the teams and officials involved was a typical start to the season as the teams ‘felt around’ to find some early form, and the clubs that settle down the quickest and iron out any problems will be the ones leading the Premiership by the half way point.

Our game against Leeds was an entirely different affair, we dominated the game for most parts, and only really started to lose our cohesion when we begun to do wholesale substitutions. I think that, had we played like we did against Leeds, then we would have won our game against Wasps.

On to another subject which has a lot of us perplexed, the non-Members bar before the game. A lot has already been said on this subject, but I do have several thoughts on this subject.

The first of which is that it is grossly unfair to criticize the backroom staff at Saracens, or the people on the door for a decision taken higher up. I know they have a face, and are the ones that have to enforce this withdrawal of a facility that a lot of us have used over the years, but they did not make the decision.

I believe it was badly handled from the beginning. By using the term ‘under-utilized’ in the original letter, it makes the withdrawal of a Members bar before the game appear somewhat arbitrary by suggesting in some way or other unknown to us members that there is some mythical number of people that need to use the bar before it is no longer ‘under-utilized’. Whilst in truth the term ‘under-utilized’ is being used in the letter as it would be in marketing, or economics-speak, to mean that the space can be better utilized to make more money for the club by being turned into a ‘corporate’ area. Like all commercial organizations Saracens need to maximize their income, but the way the decision not to open the members bar prior to games was originally relayed to the members was, and still is, a big PR guff that could have been handled better from the beginning.

Whilst our esteemed CEO has tried to justify his decision and has talked to Rupert the chairperson of the SSA, I’m somewhat wondering what Sinders might expect from the SSA. The one thing it does show is the esteem that the Club holds for the SSA. Two things strike me here:

Whilst I expect a lot of the members of the SSA are also members of the Club, I’m not sure that a lot of members of the Club are members of the SSA.

Furthermore, I, for one, think the SSA should avoid becoming embroiled in stuff from which it can not later extract itself. The SSA has good relations with the club, unlike those under one of Sinders’ previous incumbents with the initials TL, and I would not like to see those relations soured by the SSA promising something that it can not deliver.

There has been a long history of the members losing privileges, but one appears to have returned, and that is at least getting to meet and chat with some of the squad members after the game. I accept most of the squad members in the bar following the game consisted of the walking wounded, but it did give the people there a chance to have a chat with HRHRH. I, for one, hope that the players will continue to be available to chat to after the game.

I suppose a couple of questions need to be asked of Sinders:

Why did it take so long to inform the members of the bar’s closure before games?,
Did he expect the storm that followed? And, if so,
Is he just hoping to ride it out ?

Just to put this in to perspective, the Saints supporters revolted over the signing of a player, who we would not have battered an eye lid at, and we revolt over the withdrawal of a bar facility. This probably goes to show we are considerably more laid back about who signs and plays for us, but separate a working person from their pint and the plebs rise up and become more revolting in different ways (No offence intended, It’s meant to be ironic).

Come The Revolution!!!