Weakened sides could sabotage title run-in
You did not need to be Inspector Maigret to work out that Agen were up to no good. When a player stopped dead with the line at his mercy, spun 108 degrees with a broad grin on his face and gently lobbed the ball to an opponent, purity of motive was obviously in short supply.
The Frenchmen were found guilty of “contriving to achieve a particular result” – throwing a game, in layman’s language – after losing 59-10 to Ebbw Vale in a second-tier European fixture in 2002. Knowing that the concession of eight tries would spare them the hassle of reaching the knock-out stage of a tournament they considered an unnecessary distraction, they leaked nine, just to be sure. You can’t be too careful when you’re on the fiddle.
So much for the great club of Philippe Sella, Abdel Benazzi, Dominique Erbani and a dozen other titans of French rugby who had approached the game with a factory setting of “win at all costs” – people would rather have played petanque with their own cauliflower ears than set foot on a pitch with the intention of finishing second.
It was not as if Agen were unable to fight on two fronts in that 2001-02 campaign: with players as influential as Christophe Lamaison and Philippe Benetton on their roster, they reached the French Championship final, losing to Biarritz in extra time. What happened at Eugene Cross Park was purely a matter of choice and convenience.
Which brings us to the conclusion of this season’s Premiership, with five clubs believing they are equipped to win the title. Exeter are already assured of a home semi-final, but the other contenders – Wasps, Bath, Sale and Bristol – are scrapping away within a couple of points of each other, heading into the last two rounds of league fixtures. Brilliant stuff. What could be better?
Yet danger lurks. Parallels with that dim and distant travesty in the Welsh valleys are thinner than a figure skater’s waistline – to be clear, no team in the league is about to take the field determined to lose – but the contest for play-off places could be distorted by directors of rugby fielding understrength teams on October 4, the final day of the regular season.
Let us, for the sake of argument, agree that all the main protagonists will emerge from round 21 with bonus-point victories and that there will be no meaningful movement in the table ahead of the last weekend. Under such circumstances, both Sale and Bristol will fancy their chances of maxing out against Worcester and London Irish respectively.
Why? Because London Irish are borderline hopeless and Worcester are not playing to win when it comes to selection. If you doubt it, they admitted as much in last week’s edition.
“You have to take a long-term view,” argued Alan Solomons, the South African in charge of affairs at Sixways. “We have a new coaching staff who’ve been able to install their systems in what is effectively an extended pre-season. Every player has been exposed to those systems as preparation for the 2020-21 campaign.”
In other words, Worcester are sacrificing the here and now on the altar of a bright new tomorrow.
But Wasps host Exeter in round 22, while Bath must travel to Saracens. These are different propositions entirely. What if the Devonians, already guaranteed a home tie in the last four, are also involved in the European Champions Cup final in the middle of a brutally tough October? Might they not see the Wasps game as their last opportunity to give the grown-ups a breather?
If that happens, and a snarling Saracens choose to mark their selfinflicted departure from the top flight by arming themselves to the back teeth against Bath, there will be a fearful row. It is one thing for a titlechasing club to make hay against an
Exeter side featuring Tom Wyatt, Alfie Petch, Jack Innard and Tom Price (all of whom started in a shadow Premiership line-up last weekend), and quite another doing it against a Sarries line-up built around Brad Barritt, Mako Vunipola, Jamie George and Maro Itoje.
Playing fields are never spirit-level flat and if either Exeter or Saracens go light into their last round-robin matches, they will have their reasons.
They are not the Agen of 18 years ago, after all. But if a team’s title chances are effectively kyboshed by the personnel choices of a director of rugby ahead of a contest being played at the other end of the M40, the smell will not be particularly sweet.
It is a year since the organisers of the World Cup dumped Italy out of the tournament by scrapping a game against New Zealand that every rugby lover, together with his maiden aunt and pet hamster, knew full well would have happened had the All Blacks been the ones in need of victory to stay involved.
Rugby cannot afford to keep disappearing up its own ethical fundament. Playing matters should always be settled on the field of play, between teams selected to win. No ifs, no buts.
“Playing matters should be settled between teams selected to win”