Probyn: Saracens must stay down for two seasons
As much as I believe we should all understand the work and efforts of those who are running and funding the Premiership clubs, I can’t help think that there should be a more level playing field for all our clubs.
The sudden and dramatic rise of any club to the Premiership from the ashes of failure owes much to its rich owner and also the ability to bend the rules. For just as Harlequins were not the only team using blood capsules, I’m sure Sarries are not the only ones to have bent the salary rules.
The thing is, even though I feel Saracens were more than a little hard done by, they, like Quins, got caught and took their punishment. However, what happens if there is no real Championship this season is another matter.
Even though in all probability they would have bounced straight back to the Premiership had the full Championship season taken place, the fact they haven’t actually won the league means they should stay where they are.
There has been a deathly silence from all involved, PRL the RFU and the club itself and yet we have had stories of a freeze on relegation for this season.
The problem for the Premiership is, if there is a relegation freeze, Saracens should be unable to be promoted even if the Championship were to start and they won, unless there is an unfair increase in the top-flight numbers just to accommodate Saracens.
If a player is suspended for any offence at the end of the season, they have to serve their bans when the game resumes. I assume that is probably true for those players who were banned just before the shutdown of the sport last March?
The fact the Premiership were responsible for Saracens’ punishment and for increasing it to ensure their relegation, indicates Saracens were expected to win the right to rejoin the Premiership, not simply be suspended from it for a season.
To allow Saracens to walk back to the Premiership without playing a full league season (particularly as they lost to Ealing last week) would make a mockery of the discipline structures of the game while giving the appearance of showing the Premiership had only enforced Sarries punishment out of spite and jealousy of the club’s success.
Simon Shaw’s interview the other week got me thinking, particularly when he said he sometimes forgets things which makes him worry.
Simon’s was the most honest of all the recent interviews regarding head injuries I have read, even to the point of saying that when injured he would fight to stay on the pitch and argued to get back on if taken off, which actually, we all did.
In making this statement he is saying that we are all complicit to some degree to any extensive damage that may or may not have been created.
After playing over a thousand games in a career that spanned well over 30 years I wondered if the fact that I don’t remember all of them in detail and sometimes forget where I put my car keys is down to the head injury I received in 1989 against Ireland. Or the one I suffered when I was an adventurous four-year-old falling off the top of a door I’d climbed at nursery school.
I am sure this is a doubt that haunts all past players, even more now as concussion has made headlines and brought to the front of peoples minds. Even those players involved in the litigation must wonder if it really was the game, or perhaps could have been the excesses of drunken nights out and an argument with a coffee vending machine that still retains the headbutt dents that caused their problem.
In my view, all of us forget things occasionally, but we only become concerned as we get older because we are told that is what happens as you age. The time I will worry is if I forget the names of my three children and who they are, but forgetting the odd game is nothing to give concern. There are aspects of the World Cup final I played in that elude me apart from the fact that we lost, just like my one and only Lions cap in Paris, which we won.
That’s the thing about memory, you tend to remember only the good and bad bits and usually colour each in the way that suits you.
Talking of memories, there have been many letters to this paper calling for a return to the ‘good old days of county rugby’ as a pathway for players to achieve the top of the game.
As much as I owe the county system for my eventual success in becoming an international player, it saddens me to say I doubt it will ever return.
One of the reasons I played so many games in my career was there were no limits on the number of games a player could play in a week or a season.
When I first started playing adult club rugby at the age of 15 as a prop I was sometimes playing as many as four games in a week. Some of these with and against much older experienced players.
There were schools county games (Surrey) midweek, schools first XV Saturday morning, club rugby Saturday afternoon and senior county (Hertfordshire, Surrey or Middx.) on a Sunday.
Now, clubs must complete a form with specific information and parental agreement for a 17-year-old to be able to play in the adult game, plus player welfare restricts players to just two games a week maximum.
Since the leagues came in, the role of the county game has declined, as players and clubs turned their backs on those games. So, unless we return to the non league structured game of the past, county rugby is sadly doomed to play no more than a bit part in the future of the game.
“If Saracens go back up without playing a full season it would make a mockery of the discipline structures”