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Chandler Cunningham-South (left) and Oscar Beard contemplate Harlequins’ humiliation in Dublin, which laid bare the gulf in class between the Premiership and Europe’s elite - Getty Images/Charles McQuillan
A weekend of sobering losses has left the Premiership with one representative in the Investec Champions Cup, causing what feels like an annual bout of soul-searching. There are several factors to reflect upon, some of them familiar.
Too many Premiership sides qualify anyway
For the Premiership to have eight out of its 10 teams in the Champions Cup, an elite tournament, always seemed absurd. And this season was likely to see something of a pinch. The collapse of three top-tier English sides during the 2022-23 campaign initially brought about a redistribution of talent within the Premiership. After that, though, clubs cut their cloth and recalibrated.
Having reached the Champions Cup semi-finals last season, for instance, Harlequins lost André Esterhuizen and Will Collier, two of their most influential individuals, over the ensuing summer. Among the departures from Northampton Saints, who also made the final four last term, were Alex Moon, Courtney Lawes and Lewis Ludlam. Jasper Wiese left Leicester Tigers. Saracens and Sale Sharks bade farewell to highly experienced figures. Bristol Bears sought to trim their squad and cut spending.
Harlequins and Leicester qualified for this term’s Champions Cup with 50-50 records in the league last season. They each won nine and lost nine of their 18 Premiership fixtures. Exeter Chiefs were marginally better, winning 10 and losing eight, yet have stuttered this campaign. They have kept company with Newcastle Falcons at the bottom of the domestic table while taking on the might of Toulouse and Bordeaux-Bègles, shipping 133 points across those two matches and 52 more on a trip to Ulster.
The format of the Champions Cup sends 16 of 24 teams into the knockouts. Such generosity, allied to a seeding system, can cruelly expose those that limp through. Leicester, Saracens, Sale and Harlequins all ‘earned’ last-16 ties with two wins and two losses in the pool stages. Was their inferiority that much of a mystery, particularly given three of them encountered opponents featuring most of the Scotland, France and Ireland Test line-ups?
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Leicester, one of four English teams to qualify for the last 16 with just two pool-stage wins, concede a try to Glasgow’s Sione Vailanu - PA Wire/Andrew Milligan
Perspective is required as well. Saints will expect to oust Castres at home and reach the semis again. When two Premiership teams reached the semi-finals of last season’s Champions Cup, it was the first time since 2016 that there had been more than one English representative. In 2021-22 and 2020-21 there were no Premiership semi-finalists at all. This is not a new phenomenon.
Timing, priorities and bad luck
A lot of Eddie Jones’s analogies pertain to cricket. He has used another, though, that likens a team’s maturation to a clock. Everyone is working towards a small window at the top of the hour, Jones says, where everything is just right: there is a blend of quality, experience and energy that is in tune with a team’s tactical plan. The job of recruiters, selectors and coaches is to ensure that the hands of the clock do not stray too far either side of midnight.
There are several aspects to this task, with a salary cap the most obvious one for Premiership clubs competing in an intercontinental competition. The United Rugby Championship does not have a salary cap and the Top 14’s upper limit, which must be a certain proportion of that team’s overall budget, is €10.8 million (£9.18 million) plus credits. Toulouse, who also boast a prolific academy – as Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall pointed out last week – are thought to shell out around €13 million (£11.05 million). The club are allowed to exceed the cap because they contribute so many players to France’s national team. The Premiership salary cap is £6.4 million, with bonuses taking it to £7.8 million before the addition of a “marquee” player’s wages.
With a 10-point lead at the top of the Premiership after 13 matches, Bath are the English side closest to 12 o’clock. They have a loaded squad, tied together by a canny spending strategy and robust backing, with a pair of half-backs in Ben Spencer and Finn Russell at the peak of their powers. Bath would be the only Premiership team to rival Leinster and the Top 14 giants for depth.
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Baptiste Serin’s cameo off the bench underlined Toulon’s extraordinary strength in depth as they easily saw off Saracens - Getty Images/David Rogers
Toulon brought both loosehead prop Dany Priso, who started the 2021 and 2022 Champions Cup for La Rochelle, and Baptiste Serin, the ludicrously skilful scrum-half, off their bench on Saturday. Hours later, Leinster introduced Jordie Barrett and Tadhg Furlong to pile the misery on Harlequins. Like those sides, Johann van Graan can field exceptionally strong match-day 23s because Bath will be spending more than £8.5 million when one factors in various credits and Russell’s £750,000 annual salary, which is exempt from the Premiership salary cap.
But Bath slipped up in the Champions Cup pool stage this season. They lost to La Rochelle at home and then, betraying that their priorities probably lay on the domestic front, stuck to what seemed to be a preordained selection policy for Benetton. Bath rotated heavily, albeit still withholding Thomas du Toit and Ted Hill to the bench, and went down 22-21. That effectively meant that they needed to oust Leinster in Dublin to go through, and could not.
Other Premiership sides are at differing stages. Gloucester are among the form English clubs, yet are competing in the Challenge Cup and turned over Montpellier on the road from 14-0 behind. Northampton are still replenishing their pack as potent backs develop together. Steered by George Ford and spurred by the Curry twins, Sale are reasonably close to 12 o’clock. Following an impressively dogged defeat in Toulouse on Sunday, Alex Sanderson said his side would grow even stronger as prodigiously talented youngsters such as Asher Opoku-Fordjour and Rekeiti Ma’asi-White develop and grow accustomed to the biggest occasions.
Leicester are close to 12 as well, but there are other variables behind English sides’ problems, and playing without a full deck just seems more damaging for squads that are assembled to compete in a 10-team domestic league.
Saracens, in something of a transition period, opted to deploy their cohort of England regulars – Jamie George, Maro Itoje, Ben Earl, Tom Willis and Elliot Daly – in crucial Premiership games after the Six Nations. The first of those matches, a loss to Harlequins, represented an important marketing opportunity for the club. Victory over Leicester saved their league season, yet compromised the Champions Cup because protocols required that quintet to take a rest, giving Saracens an extremely green bench in Toulon. Tigers travelled to Glasgow Warriors without Joe Heyes, Ollie Chessum and George Martin as well as Julián Montoya and Tommy Reffell. Sale were handicapped by injuries to Bevan Rodd and Joe Carpenter.
To a degree, such absences are occupational hazards of rugby union and demand that clubs are adaptable. Warriors did not need the excellent quartet of Scott Cummings, Jack Dempsey, Sione Tuipulotu and Huw Jones to dismiss an ill-disciplined Tigers convincingly. Prioritising can work both ways, though. Northampton are free to pile their eggs in the Champions Cup basket now, because their Premiership title defence – in a league free from relegation – is as good as over.
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Saracens’ Angus Hall showcases the entertainment on offer in the Premiership, but do its demands compromise European campaigns? - PA/David Davies
All-out attack coming home to roost?
It bears repeating that the basketball scorelines of Super Rugby did not appear to hinder New Zealand in the international arena and Dan Biggar used his Mail Online column last week to urge English supporters to celebrate the “fantastic” Premiership. Biggar, now at Toulon after his stint with Saints, compared the Premiership spectacle favourably to the Top 14. He identified Toulouse and Bordeaux as free-running outliers in France.
Try-fests and another compelling play-off race in the Premiership, with second and eighth separated by just nine league points, as well as all seven of those sides having won between eight and six domestic matches out of 13, are hallmarks of an exciting league full of fallible teams. Referees in the Premiership are mindful of maintaining flow and intrepid attack coaches are thriving.
It is impossible to know for sure whether all that contributes to flimsier defence, but the signs suggest as much and there have been alarming lapses this year. Toulouse hit Leicester for 80 in January and Saracens shipped 40 unanswered points at Stade Mayol on Saturday as their brilliant start was wiped out in a 72-42 defeat. Harlequins were humiliated 62-0 by Leinster, who also battered Bristol and Bath on the way to an average of 48 points across three victories over Premiership sides.
But could it be that the haves are pulling away from the have-nots more generally and fewer teams are left in the middle? Leinster, La Rochelle and Toulouse have contested every final since 2021. Bordeaux seem poised to succeed La Rochelle at the very top table. Alternatively, the big two may separate themselves.
Among the best performances from Premiership teams in the Champions Cup this season was Tigers’ effort at Stade Chaban-Delmas in a 42-28 loss to Bordeaux. Leicester grafted and scored four tries, yet were undone by some devastating transition attack from Louis Bielle-Biarrey and friends. Do not forget that Bordeaux subsequently plundered 66 points against a Sharks side containing Siya Kolisi and other World Cup champions. Premiership sides have not been alone in their suffering.
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