No other sport kicks off a new season with more tangled emotions than rugby union. Charles Dickens would have appreciated the continuing dilemma: the best of times mixed in with the worst, a supposed age of wisdom shackled by scheduling foolishness. When the British & Irish Lions belatedly stumble from the treadmill next July it will have been yet another tale of too many cities.
Hence the reason why every expectant northern hemisphere preview has to come with a cautionary “if fit/available” asterisk. It requires little foresight to predict Saracens, double winners last year, will again be frontrunners domestically and in Europe. Their players, though, are not robots. Even if Maro Itoje, Owen Farrell, George Kruis and the Vunipola brothers make it unscathed to May there will still be a 10-match tour to negotiate. Leigh Halfpenny has confirmed he will be released – if selected – by his French club Toulon but disruption is still inevitable. For the finals of the Premiership and Pro12 to continue to be staged a week before the opening Lions tour game in New Zealand is simply an insult to the top players in both leagues.
Those responsible should once again offer a collective thank you to the battered infantry who keep bailing them out. Never mind the threat of injury or longer-term concussion risks, every player is busting to get out there. That inner desire needs protecting and celebrating. To be in Rio to watch Fiji’s magnificent men and Australia’s wonderful women sell sevens to a new global audience in a sparsely populated temporary arena was to have a similar message reinforced. How blessed is rugby that its participants remain so grounded and so at ease in the face of adversity?
It is this mandatory depth of character that ultimately saves the sport from itself. It also helps to deflect the nagging fear player wellbeing still involves a touch of Russian roulette. The former Scotland wing Shaun Longstaff, now a player agent, offered some fascinating observations this week, suggesting to BBC Scotland the game was warping into something even he, as a former international, struggled to rationalise. According to Longstaff, coaches are openly asking agents to “find us a freak” and judging players on their G-force readings when smashing into rucks. Longstaff particularly frets for younger players, desperate to retain or gain a contract, who feel compelled to push their bodies and heads too far: “I don’t know the way forward. I just know I’m worried and have been for ages.” He is far from alone but not everyone is listening.
In 20 years’ time it can only be hoped the global structure has fewer kinks in it. There will certainly be more international sevens tournaments in these islands, alongside higher-profile women players. It will seem crazy that more people did not glimpse the potential earlier but what of the professional 15-a-side club scene: exactly how far can it go?
For all the Premiership’s charms – and its competitiveness and clannishness are second to none – there remains room for improvement. Anyone who saw the All Blacks slice and dice Australia in the past fortnight knows what top-class spatial awareness and clever handling looks like. Judging by some social media accounts, one or two British players are more bothered about chasing Pokémon around their training fields than following suit. Hopefully this will be the season when execution levels rise and a fear of failure dissolves the moment the first whistle blows in Gloucester and Newcastle on Friday night.
That is easier said than done with automatic relegation around – just ask Bristol or Worcester – but no contemporary side can hope to prosper simply by playing one-dimensional, one-out rugby. It might have sufficed a decade ago but no more. This season’s Premiership will be home to enough marquee players to form a large tented village: Kurtley Beale, Willie le Roux, Matt Toomua, Taulupe Faletau, Schalk Burger and Louis Picamoles have not signed up for a grim, safety-first experience.
The Wasps director of rugby, Dai Young, made the valid point that pre-season assumptions do not automatically pan out. Many of Wasps’ vaunted signings, for example, are unavailable to start the season while Charles Piutau and George Smith have departed. Worcester are also shorn of some key men; Bath’s squad look thin in parts. Meanwhile do Gloucester, Newcastle and Harlequins have enough to hammer their way into the top six, let alone higher?
The first half dozen league games will be particularly telling; as London Irish found last season it can be ruinous to start slowly. Worcester, now under Carl Hogg, have a new artificial pitch but it is hard to see them winning many away games unless Ben Te’o transforms their attacking potency. A flinty Sale side, in contrast, have the potential to make a fast start, at which point anything becomes possible.
That said this season’s tea leaves suggest a similar final four to last season. Saracens, Exeter and Leicester have the squads, coaches and drive to claim the top three places and Wasps, once their reinforcements arrive either side of Christmas, will fancy a late rush. Northampton, Quins and Bath should similarly improve as the season progresses but will be deprived of key internationals at inconvenient moments. This is a season made for Alex Lozowski, Ellis Genge, Dave Dennis, Ollie Devoto, AJ MacGinty, Mike Williams and Matt Kvesic, supposed understudies whose stock could rise rapidly. Even Saracens could find life awkward next May should half a dozen players be subconsciously thinking about their Lions adventure. Serving three demanding masters is hard, particularly when the relentless Eddie Jones is among them.
In the Pro12, following Connacht’s outstanding effort last season, it is a good time to be following Ulster, with Piutau now based in Belfast and Ruan Pienaar not yet banished by the IRFU, who are forcing him to leave next summer because they want more Irish-qualified scrum-halfs. It is a harsh way to treat a loyal player but such is modern rugby life; perverse, unpredictable, tough. The shiny-eyed anticipation before a new season is delicious but hard times await all bar a fortunate few.
