English rugby crusties used to look down their noses at the avalanche of tries in Super Rugby and complain it was just a candyfloss version of the real thing. No defence, set-piece simply as a means of restarting the game… a load of overblown fluff.
The wheel turns full circle. The circus has come to the Gallagher Premiership. The pie and pint has been replaced by popcorn and reclining seats.
There were 44 tries in five matches last weekend. Tomos Williams is throwing no-look assists straight out of the Harlem Globetrotters playbook, kicks at goal are being put out to pasture, attacking rugby is everywhere. The English game is barely recognisable from the grinding stodge-a-thon of old. Audiences are being royally entertained.
It isn’t that teams have just stopped defending in the Premiership. The tackle success percentage for the top four is actually slightly higher this season than last. It is just they are having more defending to do as opponents go all out for tries.
Games when there isn’t a try-scoring bonus point scored are in the minority. Since the Premiership returned post-Six Nations, six of the ten clubs picked one up a fortnight ago and seven did last weekend.
The landscape has changed. So maybe the bonus point system needs to change to reflect this.
It was brought in for the 2000/01 season as a lever to encourage sides to try to score more tries. But now, with a whopping, all-time high average of 7.5 tries per match in the Premiership it almost feels like the bar is too low.
One suggestion has been to raise it to, say, five tries to earn a bonus point. It is a thought.
Or maybe switch to the French system whereby a side needs to outscore their opponents by three tries to accrue their bonus point. Again, it is a thought.
Here’s another one with a more positive slant – bring in a double bonus point instead.
If a side scores four tries, they get their extra point; if a side scores eight, they get two points. Why not give the sides who provide the most in the way of entertainment something extra?
So far this season, the eight-try mark has been reached in a game seven times, twice – by Gloucester against Bristol, and Bristol against Exeter – in the space of the past two weeks.
The current system incentivises teams for a certain period of the game but quite often that isn’t for long with tries being scored ever more rapidly. The number scored in the first half of Premiership games has almost doubled over the past decade.
Adding an additional bonus point for sides reaching eight tries would push teams to keep on playing.
So far this season, the eight-try mark has been reached in a game seven times, twice – by Gloucester against Bristol, and Bristol against Exeter – in the space of the past two weeks.
Bristol, the league’s great showmen, have done it three times, Bath twice, Gloucester and Northampton once each.
The double bonus wouldn’t come into play that often but it could make a difference to the play-off race in a congested league. It would also be a reflection of what the Premiership stands for these days.
Super Rugby still has its nose out in front globally in terms of tries but in Europe the Premiership has become the league of choice for the thrill seekers.
Fifteen years ago, just 3.2 tries per game on average were scored in the Premiership.
Now look at it.
No wonder viewing figures on TNT Sports have risen by eight per cent this season.
Everybody’s a bit different. Saracens and Quins are a bit different to maybe Sale and Exeter and maybe Newcastle are very different to Bristol and Gloucester. That’s the beauty of rugby. But everyone is trying to be positive.
Johann van Graan, Bath head coach
“I think the Premiership is in a very good place. I think there’s some very good coaches in this league and some very good players,” said Johann van Graan, head coach of leaders Bath.
“I think number one, everybody is trying to play a positive brand of rugby. Everybody’s a bit different. Saracens and Quins are a bit different to maybe Sale and Exeter and maybe Newcastle are very different to Bristol and Gloucester. That’s the beauty of rugby. But everyone is trying to be positive.
“I think if you look at the league in general, there hasn’t been a lot of coaching change so that brings a bit of continuity. Teams are getting settled.
“And then the other bit is how it gets refereed. I’d say the Premiership is very clean and it has a big focus on the tackle rollaway and that helps with positive rugby.”
Bath are the league’s top try scorers with 71 in 13 games with an attack orchestrated by the peerless Finn Russell but they have also conceded the fewest tries with 36.
“We all have 24 hours in a day. Nobody gets extra time. It’s who uses the time the best,” said Van Graan, who has coached in Super Rugby with the Bulls and in the URC with Munster.
“For us, it’s making sure we’ve got a good balance in the week. If we look at the game simplistically, we believe it’s 50 per cent attack and 50 per cent defence.”
If Bath fans are happy with the result then so are Premiership supporters as a whole who certainly cannot complain about bang for their buck this season.
Whether all this fun and frivolity is good for the national team is another issue. In one sense it does not matter – the Premiership is its own entity trying its best to survive and thrive in choppy financial waters. But club and country are inevitably intertwined.
Whether all this fun and frivolity is good for the national team is another issue. In one sense it does not matter – the Premiership is its own entity trying its best to survive and thrive in choppy financial waters. But club and country are inevitably intertwined.
While there is an argument Test rugby does not bear much relation to the fare on offer at the moment in the club game and Steve Borthwick could do with a more closely aligned product, there is also a counter-argument which says the England coach has directly benefited from this attacking explosion.
The skillsets it has encouraged enabled England to transform themselves during the Six Nations once the handbrake applied so painfully against Scotland was released.
By the end of the championship, attack was the main growth area of England’s game.
If England can marry that with some of the country’s more traditional strengths – the ones Borthwick would be more naturally associated with as a former second row – they could be on to something.
In the meantime, weekend after weekend we just get to sit back and enjoy the show.
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