An exhilarating rugby Premiership title won against the odds

Yesterday afternoon from 4.30pm onwards, shut away at home, I watched the build-up to and then the full two and a half hours’ worth of English rugby union’s Premiership Final (and its aftermath) between Exeter Chiefs and Harlequins at RFU Twickenham being broadcast ‘live’ on BT Sport 1.

I shall leave Rusters who wish to acquaint themselves with the full details of this epic contest to read their favourite provider(s) of newspaper match reports and/or watch the highlights packages – or possibly the repeat showings of the unedited footage – that I am sure BT Sport will make available.

Here I simply propose to record some reflections upon the climax of the England club rugby’s 2020/2021 season.

In doing so I shall first declare a personal interest: for a quarter of century I was a committed Harlequins supporter but, some four seasons ago now, then cut all ties with the club because of my personal frustration with certain aspects of the club’s administration.

As a result I watched yesterday’s proceedings – which resulted in a 38-40 victory for Quins – with fascination and yet a certain sense of detachment.

Then again, I could not honestly claim that I was watching them entirely from a “neutral third party” viewpoint.

I was willing the men who famously wear the quartered-coloured shirts [as a matter of fact, yesterday they were wearing the club’s 2020/2021 red/white “away” versions because Exeter were notionally the “home” team] to do well in the sense of “making a game of it” for the spectacle/entertainment value of the occasion, but beyond that I was happy to row in behind the collective wish “may the best team win”.

The first thing to register is that – ignoring the Covid-19 pandemic aspect, which I shall return to in a moment – English rugby’s 2020/2021 Premiership season was a particularly weird one.

With the disgraced behemoth Saracens club spending its year of penance for financial misdemeanours in the Championship [they will return to the top table next season having last week run up a cricket score-worth of points against their fellow finalists Ealing Trailfinders in the two-game play-off promotion final] – notwithstanding that several of their brightest stars found temporary employment in top Premiership teams via loan-out arrangements – it had been left to the West Country clubs Exeter Chiefs and Bristol Bears, the next two richest in the top flight, to dominate the regular league season … and this they duly did.

Next I want to call out the ridiculous restrictions, rules – call them what you will – that the Government has imposed randomly upon mass public gatherings in the run up to what is now our mid-July full emergence from lockdown (if it actually even goes ahead).

It doesn’t matter what the details were, or indeed the theories behind them, but (such are the resulting inconsistencies) crowds of 60,000 will be allowed at Wembley Stadium for both the upcoming semi-finals and final of the 2020/2021 Euros football tournament, whereas yesterday only 10,000 were allowed to attend rugby’s Premiership Final.

Next, I personally have found the quality of rugby on display in most of this season’s Premiership matches (as shown on television, I haven’t seen any rugby in the flesh this term) mediocre to the point of boredom.

Endless bouts of “kick-tennis”; repeated recycling and protection of the ball in rucks and mauls (legally permitted by the current rules and referees’ interpretations of them) about which the opposition team can do little; and the apparent domination of Defence over Attack in team strategies – these have all played their part in rendering rugby less of a spectacle than it can and should be.

As Harlequins bask in the glory of their Premiership victory this morning I am not so much interested in the “fairy tale” of how they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps from the nadir of last December when they were languished in the league table  basement – out of the blue suddenly sacked their director of rugby Paul Gustard in January – and then somehow their players (with their specialist coaches) “managed themselves” through a total re-set and then a run of form that took them to the Premiership play-off semi-finals and then final.

For me, the real headline is that in a single week – and two extraordinary matches, both of which have had the distinction of being described by commentators, pundits and ex-players as “the best Premiership rugby match ever” – the Quins first team squad has somehow triumphed by abandoning virtually all rugby’s traditional, well-tried, strategies and simply “going for it” by constantly doing the unexpected, seeking to keep “on the front foot” at all costs, attacking with verve and always “backing up” the runner who has the ball.

It sounds crazy – for all sorts of reasons it might not (or should not, even) have worked – but, amazingly, it did.

In interviews afterwards several players claimed that “playing the Quins way” was in their DNA but – to me – that’s romantic tosh.

What Quins have been doing since January is – effectively with nothing to lose – play all-out, high-risk, attacking rugby which meant that, on any given day, they would either “win big” or “lose big”. Their good fortune has been that their particular blend of players and team spirit somehow saw them through.

It enabled them to pull off what is now accepted as the “greatest Premiership come-back of all time” (in their case, being 0-28 down in their semi-final against Bristol Bears before half-time) just eight days ago and then also emerge victorious from this extraordinary Premiership Final yesterday.

Let it be placed on record that both these games were also graced by losing teams that played their own parts in the scintillating and extraordinary spectacles on display.

False dawns can be two a penny in any walk of life.

And yet some of us were left wondering idly last night whether rugby union is now on the cusp of leaving its dour “controlling” strategies behind and entering a new world of thrilling sporting entertainment.