The sport’s days of reckoning are here, and everyone from the RFU to reckless club owners is responsible for the painWe could start with the sheer catastrophic waste of it all. All those years, all those hundreds of millions of pounds squandered. All the fudged decisions and fingers-crossed accounting. The oceans of bullshit, the overflowing reservoirs of self-interest. And yet that’s still not the most upsetting element. Worse is the numbing pain for everyone associated with two disintegrating clubs and the human cost of English rugby’s days of reckoning.There will be some looking at the travails of Wasps and Worcester and giving a resigned shrug. Of course they were spending beyond their means. Of course that couldn’t go on indefinitely....
Financial woes and player welfare concerns abound but rugby union remains a compelling spectacle when everything clicksEvery now and again on social media a video clip will emerge of a lonely surfer trying to catch a skyscraper-high wave off the coast of Portugal. Time it right and the long ride down is truly epic. Get it slightly wrong and the consequences of that misjudgment do not bear thinking about.In many ways the 2022-23 Premiership season feels broadly similar. Increasingly there are jagged financial rocks everywhere and the game’s physicality continues to make it unsuitable for the faint of heart. Continue reading...
There is a sick feeling in the stomach and English rugby will need to identify genuine applicants to assist the clubs in crisisWe should be casting our eyes over the runners and riders, perusing the comings and goings, drawing up our projected finishing orders, semi-finalists, winners. We should be arguing with alacrity over all of the above, dismissing each other’s opinions as worthless. Have you ever actually played the game? You don’t know what you’re talking about. All the usual brickbats any self-respecting sport rings out with at this time of year.Instead, we approach the new season of English rugby, 25 years after the Premiership was minted, with a sick feeling in the stomach. We cannot even predict with any...
Sale v Worcester should have been off when Covid-19 outbreak was confirmed. Instead the title race was put before healthAnyone visiting Sale’s training ground in Carrington last Thursday, the day when coronavirus tests were conducted, would have had to isolate when the results came back the following day and showed the club had a Covid-19 outbreak, with 16 players and three staff testing positive.They would have had to isolate, that is, if contacted by the NHS Test and Trace service which, given what is happening throughout the country, was not that likely to happen. And yet the Sale players who tested negative, and who had been mingling and training with those who were found to have the virus, were not...
Billy Vunipola needs Farrell’s ruthless focus, Cipriani’s patience boosts Gloucester and Saints reaping rewards of faith in youthOne topic did rather dominate the conversation at Ashton Gate. And the booing. This looks as if it will be a new reality for Billy Vunipola, which may or may not come to affect his game over the coming weeks. He has always come across as something of a happy-go-lucky guy but the No 8 will need the ruthless focus of his England teammate Owen Farrell if recent events and any future repercussions are not to distract him from his day job. One other point did muscle its way into the talking – and that was the kicking. As if chastened by their...