The Premiership play-off semi-finals were a fitting summary of a league season high on ambition. The finishes at Sandy Park and the Ricoh Arena, two replacements scoring tries to win the match in the closing minutes, were dramatic but even the dullest matches can come alive at the end when someone is chasing a game.
What went before in Exeter and Coventry was as notable as the punchline. It was not that long ago when many Premiership sides were risk averse, kicking in their own half and rarely offloading, but with more clubs now training like Eddie Jones’s England, high on pace and intensity with an emphasis on handling and continuity, matches are being won rather than not lost.
Saturday’s final at Twickenham is a meeting between the two top try-scoring teams in the league this season, Wasps and Exeter, for whom home advantage last weekend was just enough. The clubs secured 28 try bonus points between them, 15-13 in favour of the Chiefs who scored at least four tries in each of their last nine matches in the regular season.
It was only the second time in 15 seasons that try bonus points have outnumbered losing bonus points, 81-53. The previous occasion was in 2014-15 when the split was 63-51 (thanks to the presence of London Welsh, who only twice managed to stop opponents from scoring four or more tries against them); in contrast, it was 33-69 in 2011-12, 27-55 in 2009-10 and 10-64 in 2005-06. In the three years from 2009, 90 try bonus points were accumulated, only nine more than this season.
The 22 rounds of matches produced 725 tries this season, 190 more than 2005-06. It is in itself not proof of quality; it does indicate intent and shows how the balance has swung from defence to attack, if not too extremely. Super Rugby used to be derided for treating tackling as an optional extra in the pursuit of entertainment and well-attended grounds.
It was unfair, if not entirely without foundation, but defence coaches have not become redundant in the Premiership. One of the games of the season was Exeter’s victory at Harlequins in April, a full-on encounter in which eight tries were scored while thumping hits echoed in the night. It was the mixture of dash and bash that elevated it beyond the compelling. One passing exchange between the home props, Joe Marler and Kyle Sinckler, was so outrageous that if they had dared to do it a few seasons ago they would have been thrown out of the front-row union for bringing it into contempt.
It was an illustration of how the game is evolving, not only in the extra skills required by props but in the ambition of teams to score in multiples of seven points rather than three. Exeter are the best example: three times last Saturday against Saracens they opted for a lineout rather than a kick at goal before they had scored a point.
Their total of 30 penalties in the regular season was heavily outweighed by the 86 tries they scored. Last season the split was 71-46, in 2014-15 it was 69-63 and in 2013-14 it was 40-55. The Chiefs kick as a last option, full stop – looking to keep the ball in hand, even deep in their own half – and they are able to score tries from deep as well as drive a maul from a lineout over the line, as they did to beat Saracens and reach the final.
Exeter may have finished second to Wasps but they look to have a slight edge going into the final. They did not win either match in the regular season against Dai Young’s side, losing away and drawing at home, but that did not blight them against Saracens, having lost to them at home and drawn away.
The Chiefs not only have momentum with them but a certainty in the way they play. They are unlikely to give Wasps the opportunity to counterattack through misplaced kicks and they do not get turned over often. Saracens feed off mistakes more avariciously than any other side but they had little to sustain them at Sandy Park and, after their set pieces were largely neutralised, their two tries came from phase play.
Wasps started their rise by shattering defences from broken play, the masters of the counterattack, but they have learned to be patient, as they showed in the final minutes against Leicester when they contrived the winning try through speed of hand. They may be without their sharpest attacking weapon, Kurtley Beale, who strained a hamstring against Leicester, but while the Australian would be missed for his ability to improvise and find space where none appears to exist, they need to sort out their set pieces.
Saracens came second in the scrum and struggled in the lineout, despite the presence of two of this summer’s Lions in the second row, George Kruis and Maro Itoje, and another at hooker, Jamie George. It was a 2013 Lion, Geoff Parling, who held sway, stealing one throw and messing up others to sabotage prime attacking ball for the European Champions Cup holders.
Saracens were not shut out, scoring their two tries after taking play through phases. Their second, scored by Mike Ellery with five minutes to go that appeared to have won the game, was created by Schalk Brits’s pass that caught out the defence. It proved, again, how the game has developed from a decade ago: multiphase play was all the rage then but it involved taking the ball up continually, waiting for a tackle to be missed.
Now it is about creating space, something that was demonstrated last Friday night when the Scarlets stunned Leinster, first by scoring three sumptuous tries in the first half and then by holding on to their lead, despite playing for the last 43 minutes of the Pro12 semi-final with 14 men. Their final with Munster on Saturday is a contest to be relished every bit as much as the showdown between the Premiership’s top two.
• This is an extract taken from the Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly rugby union email. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
