England expects a big weekend of revenge
Round 3 of the Champions Cup couldn’t have been more dismal for the English clubs, with all seven losing against Top 14 and PRO14 opposition. The autopsies began immediately, but it’s hard to put your finger on why it happened. Of course it might just be cyclical – it’s not that long ago that we had a round where every English club won – but I think there’s a bit more to it than that.
Let’s start with the obvious – despite those results nothing will shift me from my view that over the course of the season, the Premiership is stronger than the Celtic League. I would also rate it as a better competition than the French equivalent where losing away from home is almost accepted.
Yes, some of the French squads are terrifyingly strong, as we saw with Clermont last Monday, but in the league they’re very different animals at home and away.
We still haven’t completely removed the inherent advantage that the top Pro 14 sides get from being able to field weaker teams before what they regard as the more important Champions Cup games – as an example, the side put out by Leinster against Benetton was vastly different from the one we saw a week later against Exeter, with eight Irish internationals having had a fortnight’s rest after Ireland’s Autumn fixtures.
Any side that can bring back re-charged players such as Rob Kearney, Johnny Sexton, Cian Healy, Tadhg Furlong, Devon Toner, Rhys Ruddock, and Sean O’Brien are going to be tough to beat!
It wasn’t that much different for Munster with Andrew Conway, Conor Murray, Dave Kilcoyne, Peter O’Mahony and CJ Stander all returning to the fold against Leicester Tigers, having missed the match against the Ospreys, who also rested their returning players ahead of their game against Saints. On BT Sports’ Rugby
Tonight programme, Ben Kay suggested that different interpretations of the breakdown across the leagues could be a factor, and I’m sure he’s onto something. It seemed to be a common feature of the English losses that they lost a lot of ball, with French and Celtic refs seeing things rather differently to the way Premiership refs do. If that’s the case, then shame on the English sides for not being prepared for it.
Of the English losses, that of Saracens was the most shocking. To see the two-times champions humiliated, was hard to watch. They may simply have adapted less well to the weather delay, but whereas they were a side that were used to long winning streaks, now losing has become a habit. Two images will stick with me from that game: that of a clearly shell-shocked and mystified Mark McCall, and possibly even more worrying, a disconsolate and baffled Owen Farrell.
That’s why today is one of the most important days for English rugby for quite some time. Wasps, Tigers, Saracens and Saints have the chance to put things right against the opposition that ‘did’ them last weekend: England expects!
Watching last weekend’s match at Franklin’s Gardens in front of a scant crowd, there was a sense of inevitability about Jim Mallinder’s departure.
He may not have ‘lost’ the dressing room, but he seemed to have lost the fans, and that has commercial implications that no board can ignore.
Mallinder had been at the Gardens for more than ten years, and is a genuine world-class coach who will be out of work only for as long as he wants to be, or is obliged to be by the terms of his departure. At times like this it’s easy to draw the conclusion that because he was fired he failed, but nothing could be further from the truth – a Premiership title, a Challenge Cup, and an AngloWelsh Cup testify to that.
Coaches have a shelf-life – sometimes a new face and a new approach works simply because the previous one has become a little stale. Mallinder was, by some margin, the longestserving DoR in the Premiership, and when someone is in position for that long, it doesn’t take much for there to be speculation about their future.
The reality is that rather than failing, Mallinder did really well to have lasted for a decade in the same job.