The new Premiership Rugby season is underway, with i’s very own rugby union correspondent daring to make predictions for the campaign ahead – including how the table might end up…
1. Signing of the summer
Michael Cheika has parachuted into Leicester from nowhere – or Paris, to be precise, where the much-travelled Australian had been living since he left the Argentina job after the 2023 World Cup – with a wonderful CV, including as the only head coach to win the European Cup and Super Rugby.
But coaches never kick or pass a ball, as the cliche goes, and while Leicester’s first-choice 15 looks awesome, you wonder about the 15 behind them, plus that indefinable quality of team spirit.
What if Cheika frightens the horses, rather than putting a winning rocket up the backsides of an underachieving squad?
The Welford Road roar could become an almighty moan, and Jasper Wiese departing is a huge loss but, as Steve Borthwick showed in 2020-21, there is potential for swift success.
2. Potential player of the year…
Broadcasters TNT Sports did a cheeky exercise of asking a top player at each club who they’d sign from elsewhere.
Sale’s Tom Curry joked about bringing back Manu Tuilagi from Bayonne, but that pedigree horse has bolted, along with Owen Farrell, Courtney Lawes, Lewis Ludlam, the Vunipola brothers and others who are in France.
Still the names who featured are exciting enough: Marcus Smith, Finn Russell, Maro Itoje, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, Ellis Genge, Alex Mitchell… all will have next summer’s Lions tour on their minds, and a strong domestic season will do them no harm.
It could be George Ford or Waisea Nayacalevu, if Sale go well.
3. And top try scorer…
Assuming Northampton’s pack doesn’t start going backwards, we should see last season’s Premiership chart-topper Ollie Sleightholme getting loads more opportunities.
Exeter’s punchy Feyi-Waboso and Sale’s rangy Tom Roebuck are among those vying with a returning past master, Christian Wade of Gloucester, who incredibly has 82 Premiership tries, just 19 short of all-time record-holder Chris Ashton, despite spending six years away at Racing and trying out for the NFL.
Bath’s Will Muir and Joe Cokanasiga, Bristol’s Gabriel Ibitoye and Leicester’s Ollie Hassell-Collins and Anthony Watson – if fit – could also figure.
4. What are the trends, and will they continue?
Last season at the top, it had never been tighter. Northampton and Bath were joint first on 60 points, and Bath did that with just 11 wins in 18 matches.
Leicester meanwhile were down in eighth place with only two fewer victories: nine wins in 18. Hence one of the Premiership’s favourite catchphrases of “anyone can beat anyone on the day”, which is great although it also rules out a dominant force who are too good for the rest.
In the years since Saracens and their salary-cap flouters went back to back in 2018 and 2019, the title has gone to Exeter, Harlequins, Leicester, Saracens and Northampton. So the only dynasty here is unpredictability.
That is, of course, unless a team already on an upward curve goes on an irresistible run. The teams who finished last season with most room for further growth appeared to be Bath, Northampton Saints, Sale Sharks and Exeter Chiefs.
The more difficult ones to assess are Bristol Bears (the team of the second half of the season, barring one loss when they couldn’t stop Saracens conceding penalties), Harlequins, Leicester Tigers and Sarries. And everyone is likely to give a few youngsters a shot, which lifts the unknown-quantity levels.
Props galore are being tipped for the top – Asher Opoku-Fordjour, Billy Sela and Afolabi Fasogbon among them – but repeated hard contact is different to fleeting moments or prowess with the under-20s.
5. And at the bottom?
The upshot of finishing 10th out of 10 is in theory (and, yes, we are dealing with administrative hypotheticals here) a two-legged relegation play-off against the winners of the Championship.
Morale at Gloucester last season was horribly precarious – viz the 90-0 humping at Northampton – and a foul rumour was that director of rugby George Skivington might have gone if the club could have afforded the severance.
On the flipside, if the pack all stay fit and find their gift for mauling again, and the new half-backs Tomos Williams and Gareth Anscombe can show their international quality, who knows.
Exeter had a goal-kicking, match-winning revelation in Henry Slade last season, but he is set to miss the first six rounds of matches – that’s a third of the league season, which will resume after the November international window then has its other main block after the Six Nations, from the end of March to the play-offs in June.
Could Newcastle Falcons make like a phoenix and rise from the ashes of last season’s winless streak?
The hulking ball of energy that is head coach Steve Diamond needs to convince outsiders that Newcastle are not just biding time for life in a second tier of a revamped English rugby set-up from 2025.
To avoid bottom place, they need to reprise something like the season before last, when they won at home to Bristol, Exeter, Gloucester, Leicester and Sale, and Gloucester away.
6. Law changes to look for…
The end of the so-called “Dupont law” that allowed players to hang around in front of a kicker should allow more space for counter-attack: players must now actively retreat away from the receiver after their team kicks possession to the opposition.
Watch for the kicking team needing to improve their communication to nail this new interpretation. No scrum option from a free-kick could prove to be a major change, increasing ball-in-play time to suit the sharpest players – or it may pass by unnoticed, seeing as in some matches there were already scrums in single figures, anyway.
The ban on ‘croc rolls’ was an obvious move, and hopefully it is combined with referees clamping down on all illegal and dangerous clear-outs.
7. Prediction time
You want a one to 10, don’t you? Okay, that’s fine, if we can at least agree it’s a hellish concept? What if Russell falls over at my favourites, Bath, who are already two centres down at the start, with the injured Max Ojomoh and Cam Redpath? All bets would be off.
What can be said with confidence is that a formula for a winning Premiership team would be: best players x best coaches x depth of squad x luck with injuries.
Taking the first three counts together, Bath score the highest, having added the excellent flanker Guy Pepper, closely followed by Sale (despite their comparatively poor try count), Leicester, Northampton and Saracens.
But can Northampton and Sarries simply shrug off the loss of two era-defining players in Courtney Lawes and Owen Farrell?
There are Lions teams, never mind Premiership ones, who have valued those two hearts of oak in their inner sanctums. Leicester and Saracens are also among those with key players currently on Rugby Championship duty.
As for injuries, they are simultaneously inevitable and impossible to predict. Leicester, for instance, have a trio of brilliant back-five forwards in England’s Ollie Chessum and George Martin and the talented Scot, Cam Henderson, who have played together just once, three years ago.
Saracens’ new centre Sam Spink is being talked of as a new Brad Barritt but he is out for at least a month.
So many questions… can Harlequins still pile points on everyone without the departed man-mountain, Andre Esterhuizen? Fly-half Marcus Smith reckons the club’s new defence coach Jason Gilmore can help stop other teams scoring.
And at a pre-season event held by the Premiership’s renewing sponsors Gallagher, Sale’s Dan du Preez picked Bristol – who have won seven of their eight league matches in this calendar year and have signed a great No.8 in Bill Mata – to take the title. Maybe we should listen to a hardnut forward who actually plays in the matches?
Let’s go, nevertheless, for this order… i predicts: Bath, Sale, Leicester, Northampton, Saracens, Bristol, Exeter, Harlequins, Gloucester, Newcastle.