This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the respective Premiership and PRO12 champions of the weekend…
The rise and rise of the Chiefs
Rob Baxter is not a man easily moved. This after all is someone who has poured some scorn on the suggestion that the new, longer Premiership season would be unfairly taxing on the players.
But the tears of joy rolling down the cheeks on Saturday after Exeter’s epic double last-minute comeback Premiership victory were the epitome of the outpouring of emotion that greeted the final whistle.
In seven short years, aided – as many of you have pointed out – by an opportunist land sale that raised funds, but built on as sound and careful a business model as you could hope to see in professional sport, Exeter have gone from Championship to Premiership summit. In a league where an established order is rarely threatened, it’s an extraordinary achievement.
It was also an extraordinary final, one that should be the clearest sign yet that at sub-international level as well as in the white shirts, all is good in elite level English rugby.
You had contrasting strategies and team make-ups, with Exeter’s size pitted against Wasps’ smaller and more nimble guile. And yet to pigeon-hole the two teams like that would be to do them a disservice, there was nothing reliant exclusively upon size for Jack Nowell’s try, nor was Nathan Hughes relying on quick-stepping feet as he led Wasps to what looked as though it might be a match-winning lead.
Yet Exeter thought through the problem and found a way back in. The mental toughness lessons of last year had been learned, even when they failed to muster a point from a thigh-burning 34-phase attack with ten to go.
No need to panic, no need to rush it. Keep going, keep to the plans and shapes and structures and the opportunities will come.
Come they did, and Gareth Steenson, who seven years ago was responsible for getting Exeter into the Premiership with his boot, now took them to the conquest of it. Who says Championship players can’t survive in the Premiership?
Wasps will no doubt be devastated. There’s talk of doing away with such occasions as this final in favour of the league-only system, but that would be a terrible waste of high-intensity match practice for those such as Nowell and Elliot Daly, who were on planes to New Zealand this morning. It would also be anti-climactic for the fans, whose noise on Saturday was every bit a part of the proceedings.
Exeter are champions of what has become perhaps the world’s finest league. English rugby is alive and well.
Elsewhere…
The Scarlets have been gaining more and more plaudits in recent weeks, but it’s a long time since they, or any team from Wales, looked so alive. If Exeter’s win was a triumph of doggedness in the end, the Scarlets’ dismantling of Munster was a triumph for those who place extra value on skills over system.
Time and time again Munster’s number 13 channel was exploited by long passes to deep runners coming on at pace. Mismatches were used mercilessly all over the place.
Passes and running lines were chosen exquisitely. Munster didn’t have an answer at the end of a season that has been as trying as it has long for many of them, but the Scarlets were so good that it probably wouldn’t have mattered whether Munster were on song or not.
But this feels like a good time for European rugby. Even the Top 14 has rediscovered itself after losing its identity for a while. You have teams in England thinking their way around problems rather than sticking rigidly to plans.
You have teams in Wales and Ireland putting on devastating displays of skill at high speed on wet days. Dare we venture that Europe might finally be catching up with New Zealand?
To play-off or not to play-off…?
What else do the Premiership, Top 14 and PRO12 have in common? Not a single one of the regular season table-toppers will be crowned champions by this time next week.
It’s a perpetual conundrum to us here at PR towers, how fair are the finals really? There’s Wasps and La Rochelle, picking their way through the rocks of unstintingly-long seasons to finish top of their respective piles, and then both are done out of their championships by last-minute swings. Finish first but come second? It's a bit hard isn’t it?
The finals and play-offs will not go away. They represent too much fan and broadcast revenue, too easy an opportunity for league managers and TV to get bums on seats and eyes glued respectively. And at the end of such a season, you’re more than happy to say ‘it should be the big-match temperament that decides’.
But we’d be all for a league champion and play-off champion to share the spoils at the end of the season, with a double of trophies on offer to those with both longevity and BMT?
Loose Pass compiled by former Planet Rugby Editor Danny Stephens
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