Small things

By Kevintheb
January 30 2012

Just a few thoughts to keep brains ticking over.

I have to wonder to myself, as a lapsed ST holder who doesn’t get up to Adams Park much any more for a whole variety of reasons, just how much the continual need to play the best team every given Saturday in the season is lowering the standard of play in the Premiership as a whole.

I thought this over the weekend at seeing Saracens being the sole English qualifier for the HEC late stages.  While not wanting to denigrate the Saracens success over the last few years it does seem that their style of rugby, while successful in the Premiership, isn’t going to get them far in the next stages.

The style seems to be born of a need to not lose.  Now you can argue this as a reasonable way to go through the season (and we have seen the benefits ourselves of good defence) but in terms of bringing people in to watch, it hasn’t worked (according to the anoraks who publish attendance statistics).

Winning styles have their imitators, and to my eyes, so much now seems to be designed to keep the ball.  When sides do open out, if they don’t score, they’re open to turnover and losing points.  And so if you don’t have your best team out, playing to a set pattern, week after week, you start to slip down towards the nasty end of the table.

Contrast this with the permanent members of the Pro12.

Take Leinster for example.  Wikipedia currently has them with a squad of 43 players, and they will play their full first team on a handful of occasions during the season, rotating the top players out to keep them fresh.  And relegation from the Pro12 – Greece is more likely to resolve its debt problems than this happening.

So is the demise of the professional game down to the threat of relegation, or is it in fact not a demise, and the five minute pick and go at the end of the match, and the static rucks for 10 seconds while the next pod rearranges, the blueprint for a way forward to a greater spectacle?