Aviva Premiership: something exciting happens

[olaf the fat]

A lot of the Ex players who bemoan that the game has gone soft played against smaller, slower and less fit players in games that the ball was in play for a lot less.
If they were subjected to the same chance of brain injury as current players would they be as gung-ho?

[tomthefan]

A lot of the Ex players who bemoan that the game has gone soft played against smaller, slower and less fit players in games that the ball was in play for a lot less.
If they were subjected to the same chance of brain injury as current players would they be as gung-ho?

What I'd be interested in seeing is a graph with 2 plots, concussion suffered and concussion inflicted vs player height.
Has devin Toner ever had a concussion?

[LeRouxIsPHat]

I've been waiting for a case like that to happen. I've often wondered about the grey area between what World Rugby have put in place and what the Doctors actually see themselves. BOD was talking about it on OTB the other day, said that he passed his HIA against NZ but that the Doc wouldn't let him go back on. Off the top of my head I can't remember when the HIA came into existence but you can certainly imagine other situations where that didn't happen. I also wonder if BOD's uncle is involved in this? Didn't he refuse to back the HIA because he thought it was inadequate?

I say this every time Willis' name comes up but I really thought he was the business until he got his first bad injury, was never the same after that.

[fourthirtythree]

Yeah, playing in the European Cup as a youngster I thought we had a real gem in him. So disappointed for him his career didn't deliver on his potential.

[Dave Cahill]

Yeah, playing in the European Cup as a youngster I thought we had a real gem in him. So disappointed for him his career didn't deliver on his potential.

He was never the same player after that shoulder (?) injury. I was convinced he was going to be a major player for Leinster and Ireland for a decade. He still did a very good job that time he came back to us on a joker.

[paddyor]

Agustín Pichot talks sense but it is too late to halt the global power shift
Owen Slot, Chief Rugby Correspondent

By my count, we now have 352 days to save the game. International rugby is a disaster movie, time is running out.
Just occasionally, I concede, the media may be guilty of overhyping a story but at present we have no need to because it is being done for us by Agustín Pichot, the vice-chairman of World Rugby. Thirteen days ago Pichot declared that we had 12 months to rescue international rugby from the financial abyss. And because the former Argentina scrum half is a rebel who wears white trainers with his suit and administers the game with the kind of panache that he showed when he played it, we all sit up and listen. Tick tock. We are all doomed. Oh hell.

Pichot was referring to the reorganisation of the global calendar, which was agreed in San Francisco 20 months ago. That was a significant event which would dictate the future of the professional game around the world. “We thought we had a fix,” Pichot said 13 days ago. Now, apparently, the opposite is the case. There is a World Rugby council meeting in Sydney this week; let’s start saving the world there.
All this came as a bolt from the blue. As you would expect, since San Francisco, the different unions around the world have been operating on the assumption that the agreements made there were genuine agreements. The RFU, for instance, is only two or three weeks away from the public announcement of the whole blueprint for the future of the domestic and international game in England. This has been a huge piece of work. Is it to be ripped up now?

No, no, said Bill Beaumont, the chairman of World Rugby — he is No 1 where Pichot is No 2 — though he would not say so publicly. He did so in a letter to the RFU in which he contradicted Pichot's statements by saying that San Francisco stands. Apparently he and Pichot are not on the same page because yesterday Midi Olympique, the French newspaper, set out even more specifically Pichot's plans for rearranging the international calendar complete with a 12-nation tournament in November to replace the traditional autumn tours.

Some people believe that Pichot is running one long campaign to take Beaumont's job, others say that he is the only one who really cares. Certainly he sounds as though he cares but when he identifies the European clubs as a big problem in the world game and then says, “Why don’t we speak to them? Why don’t we get together?” it would help if he then followed that with a phone call. No, they have not been invited to join the Sydney summit.

Yet Pichot talks so much sense. There is no doubt that the clubs in England and France, in particular, are destabilising the world game. World Cups are always watersheds and, almost daily, the French press bubbles along with rumours of the latest All Black superstar who is being tempted by big-money offers to emigrate the minute the World Cup is done.

Ben Smith and Ardie Savea are reportedly being chased by Pau. Likewise Racing 92 and Toulon want Ryan Crotty, Toulon would also like Sam Whitelock or Brodie Retallick (well, who wouldn’t?), Lyons want Nehe Milner-Skudder and a reported four clubs are lining up bids in the region of €1.5 million (about £1.35 million) a year for Beauden Barrett.

Lima Sopoaga, the All Black who recently joined Wasps, said two weeks ago that he expected the number of Kiwi defectors to rise post-World Cup. Jaco Kriel, one of the new Springbok arrivals at Gloucester, said that he had come because after the World Cup the market would be flooded. It just so happens that, at the very time when international rugby is struggling to deliver financially in the southern hemisphere, Premiership Rugby in the north is enjoying a rollicking start to the new season on the pitch and, off it, is considering offers of cash injections in the region of £250 million.

The NZRU is fighting hard to keep its stars at home; recently it made a real statement in confirming that Rieko Ioane had signed for four more years. The hope in New Zealand is that Ioane’s is a lead that others will follow. However, it is indisputable that the direction of travel for rugby finances, and therefore for players, is northwards. Over the coming months, we will see if this is just more than the regular trickle or, as Kriel says, something of a flood.

If nothing else, Pichot’s recent statements have confirmed that San Francisco was a fudge. There were opportunities there for the kind of blue-sky thinking that, 20 months too late, he is now pushing. Rugby’s leaders could have been radical. For instance, like Pichot, they could have addressed this dated tradition of a group of inconsequential friendlies in November; alternatively, they could have pushed for a quadrennial club championship between the hemispheres’ best; alternatively, they could have protected one of the greatest and most popular cash cows of them all, the British & Irish Lions.

The possibilities were endless. Rip up the status quo and start again. Instead, they emerged with a compromise that seemed, just about, to work for everyone. It was not about leadership and taking the game in a new direction; it was all about consensus and meeting in the middle. Twenty months on, Pichot says that international rugby is on its last legs. It would have helped if he had foreseen the end of the world at the time that they were redesigning its future. It is 20 months too late to redraw the map.
The international game is not dying but it is moving slowly north and nothing is going to stop it.

WRT the 250m cash injection, I'm beginning to think it's all just a bluff. It never made any sense given they're already loss making (+20m annually)and the deal in question would have more than doubled that. They were just trying to make themselves look important over this. Apparently the plan was to move the June tests to July and then PRL said they would move games to June.

I also think the Pichot idea of a 12 team league is nuts and is just the SH trying to angle for position wrt the new Lions agreement.

[blockhead]

Worcester Warriors 52-7 Bristol Bears---Wow. All kinds of records broken there.

[Dave Cahill]

Christian Wade has apparently quit Wasps to take up Colonial Football

[TerenureJim]

Christian Wade has apparently quit Wasps to take up Colonial Football

I'm sorry but colonial football? Has he overdosed on Battlestar Galactica or something?

[cormac]

Christian Wade has apparently quit Wasps to take up Colonial Football

I'm sorry but colonial football? Has he overdosed on Battlestar Galactica or something?

NFL

[neill_m]

Malakai Fekitoa being rumoured as Wade's replacement.

[blockhead]

Malakai Fekitoa being rumoured as Wade's replacement.

Probably just spin to counter the raft of bad news coming out of Wasps atm.

[Peg Leg]

Malakai Fekitoa being rumoured as Wade's replacement.

Probably just spin to counter the raft of bad news coming out of Wasps atm.

Apparently an incoming Fekitoa crystalised the decision for him. If you're a pro playing for wasps and you can read, you're probably on the phone to your agent a lot at the moment.

[FLIP]

London Irish moving back into London with a ground share with Brentford.

They'll be the Yes Nots then.

[Hornet]

London Irish moving back into London with a ground share with Brentford.

They'll be the Yes Nots then.

More the Yes Not Yets (move as from Summer 2020).

[Xanthippe]

London Irish moving back into London with a ground share with Brentford.

They'll be the Yes Nots then.

Or the 'Are Nots'

[rooster]

London Irish moving back into London with a ground share with Brentford.

They'll be the Yes Nots then.

Or the 'Are Nots'

They may well have a certain Mr P Jackson at 10 if Perpingpong head downwards and his release clause kicks in.

[Ruckedtobits]

Prem Rugby have agreed sale of 27% of their Company to CVC for Stg£200. Limited details but strange deal. Usually you only sell a % below that which can block a takeover (c.26.4%), or you do a deal for a stake of roughly 49%, with a premium for going over 51%.

No details, so hard to tell. Plenty of platitudes from Ian Richie (no conflicts of interest) that RFU are supportive of the deal which will benefit all levels of English Rugby and bring the game to a wider audience - or at least that's what I expecthim to say. McCafferty has pleated on about the "Investment" destined for infrastructure as we have Salary Cap in place for a further two years.

Premiership Rugby and RFU deserve each other. Neither cares about success or the future development of the game, only about Money, Money, Money.

[FLIP]

Exeter v Saracens on free TV over here in the UK today.

All I can say from that half, is this the best that English rugby has? Very low standard rugby on show

[blockhead]

Saracens lose for the first time since they lost to us way back in the spring, seems like years ago now.