Loose Pass: Rugby ‘categorically cannot’ afford leagues being ‘diminished’ after ‘painful’ URC and PREM start

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the awkward start to the PREM and the URC…

Explaining the start of the season

Undeniably, the numbers do tell their own tale. Bags of tries, oodles of ooohhh and aaahhh moments, plenty of smash and a couple of moments of controversy. The opening weekends of the Gallagher PREM and the URC delivered lots of good rugby and it was largely fun to watch. As opening weekends go, there have been many worse.

On the strength of it all, gush the respective organisers, the leagues will take the world by storm. Wrigley Field in Chicago could host a PREM game. The action is all so good that rugby has to soon dominate the world.

Hmm. Actual world domination is currently achieved, in sporting terms, by that pesky Premier League thingy from the other football. The action isn’t always good (said with both eyes open, Loose Pass  has no problem enjoying a well-played top-level soccer match), but the superstars are global and the action is all over the sports networks everywhere.

There are a number of reasons for this, not least the one about the game being simpler to understand for the uneducated, but among them is the undeniable one that the teams are, by and large, at full strength on each and every important occasion.

Contrast that with club rugby. The Stormers v Leinster is a blue-chip game, the URC’s equivalent, if you like, of Bayern Munich against Milan.

Parallels are hard to tie, but bear with me. Imagine, for a second, that Sepp Blatter and Alexander Seferin’s dream was realised and soccer had a European club league, and that was one of the opening fixtures. Imagine then, that on the opening day – and indeed for several of the season’s fixtures – Bayern’s German internationals were unavailable for conditioning reasons and Inter’s Italians the same. Imagine that throughout the season, Real Madrid’s Galacticos were available for only 70-80 per cent of their games, while Paris Saint-Germain were being asked to play Barcelona on the same weekend France were playing Spain.

The league wouldn’t struggle as such; such is the power of football. But would the pulling power of the league be diminished? Very much so. Soccer can get away with it. Rugby categorically cannot.

In the event, the Stormers-Leinster match was painfully one-sided, partly due to the inexperience of the Leinster team, partly also due to the clear importance placed by the strategists on having a go and trying everything possible rather than explicitly trying to win. Fun for the neutrals perhaps, but hardly the tense occasion full of the top names that you’d want the game to be sold on the back of.

PREM coaches have been more explicit. Saracens coach Mark McCall has bemoaned both the lack of the Lions tourists but more significantly has pointed to the mandatory 10-week rest period for internationals as problematic. It led to a number of players across the board seeing their first action of any kind this season, being the thud and blunder of the PREM openers. It’s good that they got a rest, but it’s hardly easing them back into it, nor is it going to get the best out of them.

Some of our people who hadn’t played are really struggling towards the end of the game. We need to look at that,” he said, mentioning also that he had declined the option of fielding a youth side in the pre-season Prem Cup and organising a friendly for the seniors instead.

Sale’s Alex Sanderson noted the rust flakes being shaken off his international players, saying: “…that’s the internationals’ first game. So some poor decisions, some poor execution, a bit stodgy, a bit stop-starty. I was frustrated at half-time.” Northampton’s Phil Dowson also noted that going cold and straight into full PREM heat is hardly ideal.

It happens in the same week as the Prem and partners have openly admitted to being in discussions about staging a match in Chicago. Just a match, one of the normal league games. How much is really on it, nobody will know. That involves players, probably already somewhat beaten up from the weekend before, schlepping across several time zones, dealing with jet lag, dealing with the long flight effects on bangs and tweaks and finding their bearings in a completely new environment.

And which weekend exactly? You can probably scratch off anything before November, simply for short-term logistical reasons. November is gone because of the internationals. December is largely gone to the Champions Cup and Christmas. January is also mostly gone to the Champions Cup, while there is no Prem weekend for eight weeks from January 24 to March 21 because of the Six Nations – and you’d imagine that March weekend might feature several knackered international players. Those not rested, that is.

In reality, you’re then probably looking at one of the final five weekends in April and May, but if you are in a race for a semi-final spot, are you really going to give up a home advantage at that stage of the season and play in Chicago instead?

Return to the start of this all: most of the weekend’s action was good. We fans could lap it up. It’s an occasional revelation for weekly watchers to see a few newbies thriving/struggling at top level and we all know that most of the teams can still be in contention for a title come April. For us insiders, it’s fun.

But in terms of selling the game to someone new… well: “yeah these are two of the biggest names in the league… yeah no, there’s about half of both teams’ best players missing, some of them playing for their country, the others on a mandatory rest program because they play too much, that’s how it is this time of year…” is not the kind of chat that sells a sporting occasion and competition to a curious passer-by.