Gloucester white flag disrepects a great Cup
Gloucester are in the process of forgetting all about Danny Cipriani, that exquisitely gifted memory-maker of a No.10 who, when the gods were smiling upon him, persuaded even the most unreconstructed thud-and-blunderer in the darkest corner of the Kingsholm Shed that rugby could be a game of artistry and wonderment.
Not that the Cherry and Whites should find it too difficult, forgetfulness being second nature to them. Only a week ago, the fact that they were playing an important game in the Champions Cup entirely slipped their minds.
The moment George Skivington, the head coach, named his side for a firstround trip to Lyon that would have been challenging under any circumstances – Les Loups are currently mixing it with the likes of Toulouse and Racing 92 at the business end of the French domestic table – one bookmaker offered the eyewatering odds of 1/1000. Needless to say, it wasn’t Gloucester who were favourites.
As ever in a sport where the treatment room stays open 24/7 and the medics never rest, Skivington was wrestling with an injury list longer than a Proustian paragraph. Yet he could, had he so chosen, have fielded a whole bunch of current international contenders, from Jonny May, Louis Rees-Zammit, Ollie Thorley and Chris Harris out back to Jack Singleton and Matias Alemanno up front, reinforced by some hardened senior figures of the uncapped variety, including Mark Atkinson, Ed Slater and Ruan Ackermann.
He declined to choose those individuals. Instead, he selected what spin-doctoring glove puppets in communications departments the world over invariably describe as “an exciting blend of youth and experience” and the rest of us call “a collection of nohopers”.
So it was that the West Countrymen visited one of the great gastronomic centres of France in the confident expectation of being eaten alive, and sure enough, they were swallowed whole. The record 55-10 shellacking was reported on the club website under the headline “Gloucester fall short in loss to Lyon”, which was a bit like saying: “Donald J Trump misses out on ‘Most Dignified Loser of the Year’ award.”
It is possible to argue that in a specific and limited sense, to borrow a phrase recently trotted out by government ministers when they were happy to break international law with their Internal Market Bill, the pandemic did rugby a favour. At least there were no Gloucester supporters paying top dollar to watch a generational mismatch between a classful of fresh-faced kids and a team of hairy-bottomed grown-ups.
Skivington will claim he had his reasons for asking the likes of Kyle Moyle, Jacob Morris, Alex Morgan, George Barton and Seb Nagle-Taylor to do a starting job, despite their having made only seven Premiership appearances between them. In a season as telescoped as this one, squad management is important.
But management is also about priorities and Gloucester did the northern hemisphere club game’s premium com
“Disfiguring the pool stage is like stripping the opening movement from a symphony”
petition a serious disservice by travelling as light as they did. Who did they think they were? Bourgoin? Actually, even those notorious under-strengthers from the Isere would give it a proper go on the opening weekend before hoisting the white flag.
There are only four rounds of pool games this season, thanks to Covid-19 – a necessary adjustment that has left the group stage even more vulnerable than usual to distortion. The decision of one club not to bother directly affects, for good or ill, those rivals who are competing for all they are worth. Privately, the administrators and broadcasters must be spitting tacks over last weekend’s shenanigans.
What is more, things could easily go downhill from here. There are clubs participating in what might be called the “jeopardy leagues” – the Top 14 in France and the Premiership in England, where, as things stand, relegation is an unpleasant reality – who are interested in the second-tier Challenge Cup in the way Twickenham is interested in sharing match-day revenues with the opposition. Which is to say, not at all.
How many struggling Champions Cup teams will allow themselves to be steamrollered as a means of finishing in the bottom third of their respective tables, thereby securing some valuable down time rather than dropping into the “other” tournament for the round of 16? The correct answer is likely to be “more than one”.
Over the last quarter of a century, European rugby has been a godsend. It immediately became the number one target for the likes of Bath, Leicester, Wasps, Toulouse, Stade Francais, Cardiff, Llanelli and the three most powerful Irish provinces – the crème de la crème of northern hemisphere club rugby in the early professional era – before obsessing the likes of Biarritz, Clermont Auvergne, Racing 92, Saracens and Exeter.
Gloucester were equally transfixed, once upon a time: they reached the last four in 2001 before losing twice in the quarter-finals as the Noughties unfolded. Given that history, the events in Lyon are best forgotten.
To be the best it can be – and that “best” is as good as anything to be found anywhere in the Union game – the tournament requires its clubs to keep their side of the bargain. Disfiguring the pool stage is like stripping the opening movement from a symphony. What follows means less than it should.