The death of the English Premiership?

Hi all,

Firstly let me make it clear that i havnt watched that much of the Premiership this season, as i have been at uni, so feel free to correct my statements if you disagree.

Altough I wont claim to have followed the premiership religiously this year, i would say that the standard of games that i have seen has been noticably poor. They seem to be slow, contain large numbers of unforced errors and to involve a large number of kicks. The standard in general has seemed low. Admittedly all of the live games i have attended this season have featured the Worcester Warriors, not famed for their attacking flair, but i have been struck by the lack of intensity and entertainment on televised games as well. The best (or worst) example of this was the Worcester - Newcastle game which saw the crowd absolutely bored senseless, and i actually believe the teams kicked as much as passed.

I was talking to some friends about this and we agreed that while International rugby is exciting and definately worth a watch, we were no longer that bothered about the club game. Of course, it is only to be expected that club rugby is of a lower standard than international, but i think there has been a general fall in quality in the Premiership. This can be traced by the poor record of english teams in the Heineken Cup over the last few years, and perhaps also by the charge of Leicester up the table into second off the back of irrestable form as soon as their internationals returned.

without wishing to sound all doom and gloom, are we witnessing the slow death of the premiership, with contributions from an increasingly packed international calendar, low attendences, and especially the complex nature of the game and its indecipherability to most of the population? the complexity of the compared to football, tennis and rugby league is a severe handicap to popularity. That the ref could penalise about 3 players at every single breakdown for technical offences that are anything but obvious, and that the scrums are an obscure kind of lottery to most, prevents people from being interested.

If true, is this due to the nature of the game, the salary cap, the actual quality of the players, or is it just a blip in a world cup year where most of the season (ludicrously) saw all the best players playing on the other side of the world (something that would only happen in rugby of all the major sports)

thanks for reading my rant all opinions welcome

matt, welcome to v2! Are you a Wuss supporter? If so, I think that makes you the board's first - long overdue to keep the balance.

You might find this thread interesting: https://www.606v2.com/t27891-the-jeff-will-it-survive-the-medium-term-5-10-years-in-its-current-format - it's not quite on the exact same topic as yours, but it linked. I'm not sure that the quality has dropped this year, altho there will be those that argue that due to the absence of oodles of international players during the RWC, the early part of the season was of a poorer standard. That being said, as we've approached the business end of the season, it strikes me that there have been so many things left to play for (relegation, Heino qualification, playoffs, etc.), that quality in recent weeks has been pretty high (as evidenced by a number of high-scoring games). All-in-all, i don't think we're witnessing the death of the premiership, but its probably not a bad time to be reviewing how the pro game is currently structured, what would serve the RFU's and the clubs' needs best (and yes, inevitably it will be a compromise), and what needs to change to get there

yeah i support the mighty warriors. Done well this year but at times it can be less than thrilling. we are improving though with the signings we have made so hopefully we will do a northampton and continue to build

i think you are probably right in that while the game is too well supported and too big to fade away, a review of the structure would be more than welcome. the thread that you linked me too seems to suggest that most people reckon the salary cap is due for increase, and this is something that i would support and something i think is necessary.

one of the less solvable issues i feel would be the actual laws and interpretations of the game, which have proven with the likes of the experimental law variations of a few years back to be very hard to implement.

in a sense i feel rugby is almost stuck in a rut with this in its present form, and frankly, areas like the breakdown and the scrum are riddled with confusion and inconsistancy. however meddling with these issues has proven to be difficult and changing such intrinsic aspects of the game is unlikely to ever truly work.

i hope we dont go too far with this and get, for example, rugby league scrums because as a prop and a rugby fan i dont want to see that.

its all about striking the right balance. unfortunately this may prove very hard to do

Honestly, if I did not read these boards I would think that everything was hunky dory in the world of rugby union as I do not here of any of the problems on here anywhere else, except for the referee and the scrums. Honestly, if you were to just watch the tele and read the newspapers there is no talk of any problems at all. Also welcome to the boards.

Mate you've basically just described the Pro 12 as well

to be fair there is only one thing if I was worried about if I was EPL are att going up, are tv deals better and do we get to keep our Euro places and money.

I will be interested when the ERC review comes up what money will be like everyone forgets that this will go up so more for each team

I think that HC is selling better year on year in the SH

I think one of the biggest issues for the EPL and the Top14 is the competitiveness, the likes of Ulster and Edinburgh have now cottoned on to what the Blues have been doing for a while, sacrificing the Jeff for the HC money of qualification, it is proving a usefull formula, how many of the last 4 champs have been from each league? How many 1/4 finalists this year were from each league???

increase the HC to 32 and allow all Rabo, adn eight from the big two with a black sea league more to follow. That way there is no way that any team finihshing 9th in the aviva could hope to claim to be better then anyone other then Italy no 2

thebluesmancometh wrote:I think one of the biggest issues for the EPL and the Top14 is the competitiveness, the likes of Ulster and Edinburgh have now cottoned on to what the Blues have been doing for a while, sacrificing the Jeff for the HC money of qualification, it is proving a usefull formula, how many of the last 4 champs have been from each league? How many 1/4 finalists this year were from each league???

Ulster have not sacrificed the league for the HC.

They have played weakened teams twice this year.
Once because of a 4 day gap between games and once after the hardest game of the year.

You cannot compare a team second from bottom with a team that could still qualify for the play offs.

For my money, there's not much wrong with the EPL. But trying to look at it objectively:

The Bad
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- English clubs did not do well in Europe this year. For now, I don't think there's enough evidence to view it as other than a blip. Last year we had two finalists and one winner in the two European trophies, which is not a bad result. If the trend continues for 2 or 3 more years, we may just have to accept that English clubs can be outgunned by big spending French clubs and Rabo clubs who have the option to prioritise European games

- The refereeing of the breakdown is inconsistent. A global problem, but it could be fixed by returning to the principle of erring on the side of the attacking team. And banning the "human centipede" ruck that Sarries have adopted, where several players queue up to protect the scrum half's access to the ball.

- Scrums are a mess. Again, a global problem. The IRB needs to do two things: i) ban the hit; ii) instruct refs to treat the scrum as a restart mechanism and only to blow up if it's dangerous or one team is preventing a pushover try. Simples.

- Some games have been dull affairs. From the ones I've watched, this has tended to correlate with teams who are outmatched by their opponent in terms of skills crossing the line in terms of physicality. I am looking at you, Newcastle.

- Some clubs had lots of players away at the RWC for some of the season. Divisive one, this. Was the quality of games lower during RWC? I didn't think so; there were some crackers. Did the teams lack for star quality? Well, some big names were away, but some exciting new talent got a chance to shine. Did inferior teams benefit? There was a lot of "Quins / Exeter / Sarries are only at the top of the table because of RWC" after the first 6 games, and sure enough the natural order of things has reasserted itself since the end of the tournament. Oh, hang on a minute... Tigers and Saints have climbed the table, but the teams who started well are still there.

The Good
------------

- There have been 4 draws, 62 LBPs and 25 TBPs so far this season. Allowing for a couple of thrillers where both teams picked up a TBP and one picked up an LBP as well, that means that over 75% of games have either finished within 7 points or featured a minimum of 4 tries. I'd call that pretty exciting, actually.

- The old order changeth (sort of). Of the 5 leading teams this year, only Leicester and Saints are used to being near the top of the table - and they have both had to scrap for it. Sarries have risen to prominence in the last 3 years, Quins and Exeter have broken through from mid-table this year. Three of those teams have spent time in the Championship in the last 6 years.

- Attendances seem to be holding up despite the weak economy, and two teams broke the world record attendance for a club game.

- There have been some cracking games. Unfortunately for the OP, most of them haven't involved Worcester.

Please neber mistake excitement for quaslity or vice versa.

Some matches including those at the top of the table have been exciting, low quality matches.

There have been some good matches as well.

As to the "order" changing. Well Sarries have been up around the play-offs for as long as Saints have. In fact ther has been no order to things really - other than Leicester have been there or there abouts every season. (7 premiership finals in a row - played against Sarriesx2, LI, Wasps, Sale and Gloucester i think).

Quins were in the play-offs two years ago.


But no the AP is not dying. Worcester have been involved in some dull games, as have Falcons - in part that is why they are near the bottom.

(Falcons against Quins was far more exciting than the Quins fan remembers though - and quins were putting themselves about in that game as well)