The final week of every domestic season is always an indicator of rugby’s underlying health. Are supporters crawling over their grandmothers in their haste to buy a finals ticket? Is the entertainment value of the product trending upwards year on year? And are there collective signs of rising positivity among players, tournament organisers and fans alike?
These are especially relevant questions right now amid all the exciting/delusional (take your pick) chatter about a possible breakaway global franchise league. And before we contemplate this year’s answers let’s hope those looking to flog the concept of a Formula One-style circus featuring the world’s top players were watching last Friday night’s game in Bath.
Because it could be that club rugby, too often dismissed in certain circles as tired old hat, has never enjoyed a more vibrant, upbeat few weeks out on the field. The first half between Bath and Bristol Bears was as thrillingly watchable and intense as the Premiership has ever been. The pace and ambition, the handling and defensive desire … all of it was spectacular with the atmosphere similarly super-charged.
Driving home – and leaving aside the losing side’s’ natural disappointment – it was hard not to think: “What more could anyone want?” A brilliant spectacle, a riot of passion and colour, an outstanding advert for the sport. Along with the French Open tennis men’s final it refreshed parts not all sports are able to reach.
On Saturday, albeit in a contrasting way, there was more to relish. Rugby is not solely about fleet-footed wingers pulling rabbits from a hat but Adam Radwan’s airborne second try was absolutely out of the top drawer. These were club fixtures masquerading as something else, as the Tigers’ head coach Michael Cheika duly confirmed on Monday. “As competitions get towards the end of the season the big games look like Test matches,” he said. “The physicality, the speed … if you look at the data they start to look similar. Test matches are a unique entity but this competition prepares players equally as well as any other. There’s no doubt about that.”
This is interesting, coming from someone who has coached all over the world. Above all, though, the outcome seriously mattered. The best sport is not about artifice or glossy marketing: it is wincingly authentic and, ideally, tribal. Bath have not won a domestic league title for 29 years and now stand 80 minutes away from breaking that drought. You could absolutely feel that pent-up desire at the Rec on Friday evening. No wonder this Saturday’s Twickenham final sold out weeks ago.
All this on the back of Northampton’s remarkable Champions Cup semi-final win over Leinster in Dublin last month, another occasion that ranked up there with the greatest away wins the competition has ever witnessed. The final in Cardiff between the Saints and Bordeaux-Bègles was another exhilarating cracker. Ambassador, you really are spoiling us.
The situation in the United Rugby Championship, admittedly, is more complex, with only a strictly limited period available in which to sell the final between Leinster and the Bulls in Croke Park. The organisers will be happy if the attendance creeps up to the 50,000 mark; being able to pre-sell tickets to a final at a venue confirmed well in advance would clearly help.
But overall this season the URC expects to announce another overall attendance record and in the Premiership average attendances are up 10% this year with a million new fans attracted to games. While none of this can airbrush away all the sport’s wider issues around financial instability and player welfare concerns, it should not be entirely dismissed either. If rugby is appealing to newbies and simultaneously delighting its existing followers, it must be doing something right.
So the first couple of questions posed in the opening paragraph can pretty much be ticked off. The third step to heaven now involves sustaining that momentum into this weekend and learning lessons from last year. Then, as now, Bath were involved in the Premiership final and were looking good in the first-half against Northampton until Beno Obano was sent off for a marginally high tackle on Juarno Augustus. In that split second the mood of the whole occasion completely changed.
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A year on, the game is still trying to balance on the same precarious high wire, caught between a well-intentioned desire to make the game safer and wanting to protect its physical appeal. History may well conclude that these twin aims have long since been incompatible, with the science suggesting repeated small blows to the brain over a long period can ultimately be worse than one or two clear-cut knockouts.
Perhaps the biggest passion killer on high-profile days, accordingly, is the sight of referees staring endlessly at big screens, trying to make definitive calls based on selective slowed-down replays or the opinions of a bossy television match official in a booth somewhere. Even then the truth is frequently elusive. In the recent Challenge Cup final, Sam Underhill was shown just a yellow card for his head-on-head tackle on Davit Niniashvili; subsequently the England flanker was banned for four weeks and misses this weekend’s Twickenham finale. Go figure.
Such maddening inconsistency continues to do rugby a disservice at precisely the moment the players are ramping things up. Imagine an oval-ball world where the skill, speed, commitment and collective enjoyment on display in Bath last Friday was the consistent takeaway. Hopefully this weekend will be similarly uplifting and restore a little more faith in the battered old game. Opt, instead, for the empty-headed, soulless R360 proposal and rugby union will reap what it sows.
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