The Premiership season is rounding the final bend and entering the home straight. Organisers like to call this point in the campaign “The Run-in” and they could hardly have wished for a better set of fixtures this weekend to begin it with. Sixth host fourth when Saracens entertain Gloucester, fifth go to seventh with Sale travelling to Harlequins and on Sunday, second and third lock horns with Bristol facing Leicester.
As was the case last season, the race for the playoffs is shaping up to be a blanket finish. Bath are out in front in first but with five matches remaining, only four points separate Leicester in third and Harlequins in seventh. Bristol are a further five ahead in the runners-up spot and with second to seventh all playing each other this weekend, through rose-tinted glasses it is the perfect way to showcase the sprint finish.
A sprint finish, that is, that comes in three different parts. After two rounds of Premiership fixtures there is a break for European semi-finals in which only Bath (1st) and Northampton (8th) are taking part. After two more league rounds another pause for the European finals – conceivably a week off for all 10 Premiership sides – before the last round of the season.
To put things kindly it is not a calendar that lends itself to building momentum. The stop-start nature of it may give head coaches the ability to plan to peak in brief bursts but surely they would prefer an uninterrupted block of fixtures in which to mount their playoff pursuit.
It is a calendar that suits nobody because the European competitions are floundering at the moment, a relic of what they once were. Three of the Champions Cup quarter-finals were markedly one-sided, the all-French clash between Toulon and Toulouse the only contest in which there was genuine jeopardy. We are likely to get a taste of what better alignment looks like in 2028 with the planned introduction of a World Club Cup in which European knockout matches will be scratched and replaced by global fixtures after the Premiership has been concluded and it would be no surprise if that sets a future precedent. Until then, however, we muddle through.
It has become the Premiership’s greatest selling point that any side can beat any other – Newcastle notwithstanding – and while that makes predicting the final occupants of the playoff places an all the more difficult task, it is hard not to draw a link with poor performance in European competitions. In short, is the Premiership thrillingly unpredictable or mediocre across the board?
That Harlequins go into the weekend firmly in the semi-final hunt having lost as many matches as they have won does not suggest a robust enough competition. Ultimately, there is a strong argument to be had that a league in which 40% of its participants will qualify for the playoffs does not demand excellence across a season. That 80% of the league’s clubs qualified for this season’s Champions Cup only serves to reiterate that point.
Is it coincidence that the one team who remain in Europe’s elite competition are the defending Premiership champions and all but out of the playoff race? In Northampton’s case, competing on two fronts is all the more difficult when England build their backline around yours and there are only so many matches in which those players can appear. As the Saints’ director of rugby, Phil Dowson, recently explained, it is a “dysfunctional” state of affairs and should not always be Northampton carrying the can by having to rest those players who are on course to exceed the mandated game limits this season.
It is another plate that directors of rugby have to juggle in the coming weeks. Marcus Smith starts for Harlequins and goes head to head with England teammate George Ford. It is a matchup you would expect Andy Farrell to be watching closely, for both players have British & Irish Lions ambitions this summer, but in Smith’s case, he will exceed the game limit of 30 before the regular season is out if Harlequins do not rest him at some point.
Given they are seventh, however, Quins cannot afford to against a Sale side who, like last year, are timing their playoff run late. As was the case last year, their inability to pick up bonus points stands out – they have seven and only Newcastle have fewer – but they will take heart from their European showing against Toulouse whereas Harlequins will be smarting from their 62-0 thrashing by Leinster.
“Last year we talked about it being some kind of climb,” said Sale’s director of rugby, Alex Sanderson. “The chasing group was so tight you can slipstream people. It’s a similar challenge in the respect that we can’t afford to lose a game but no one fixture can be replicated in terms of feeling so it’s important we reframe it.”
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It is too simplistic a divide to make, but it is tempting to bracket Sale along with Leicester and Saracens as the more hard-nosed sides seeking the playoffs up against the freewheelers in Harlequins, Bristol and Gloucester. Certainly the latter, however, have impressed this season after undergoing an attacking revolution and can go a long way towards a playoff place with victory at Saracens. It remains to be seen whether the dedicated away zone – The Shed on Tour as it has been billed – makes much of a difference with a couple of hundred Cherry & Whites supporters expected to congregate, but credit the Premiership for trying something new all the same.
“I think it’s a good thing,” says the Saracens director of rugby, Mark McCall, who welcomes back Maro Itoje. “You want to have the best possible atmosphere at a game. If you group all the travelling away fans together, it should heighten the noise, and that’s what everybody wants, really.
“Gloucester have really changed their identity this season. George [Skivington] came out and declared his intent to change the way they play in preseason, and to be fair to him, they’ve stuck to that. They now seem comfortable with the way they want to play the game.”
Leicester, meanwhile, have much to contend with off the field with Michael Cheika set to depart at the end of the season. Efforts to replace him have been a struggle with the intended appointment of Paul Gustard hitting the buffers while there is the suggestion Cheika could stay on in some sort of long-distance consultancy role.
On the field they too are reeling from a disappointing European exit but, with a daunting trip to Bristol to come on Sunday, they are well-placed to ensure Cheika’s one and only season as head coach ends on a high. Indeed, he summed up their predicament when asked this week about targets for the rest of the season. “No idea, mate. The one thing I know is this: win every game and we’re in.”
