LONG READ ‘Pre-season seems to contain a mind-altering opiate that erases all ills from the past season and floods the brain with enriching optimism’

The start of the English rugby season may have been put back by a fortnight for the rank and file because of the summer heatwave and its effect on the playing surfaces up and down the country, but the top end will get under way this weekend with the Prem Cup.

To be honest the Prem Cup is more of a tip-toe than a leap into the new season even if Bristol v Gloucester on Saturday will be televised on TNT Sports. The competition is a pale imitation of the domestic cup whose final used to fill Twickenham in its glory days.

The line-ups the clubs put out will be stronger than in the November and Six Nations Test windows when the competition will also run, but they will be made up of a mish-mash of first-team regulars and squad members as the directors of rugby use this three-week window as a runway into the Prem proper.

In terms of what really matters, this is still pre-season and there are reasons to be grateful for that.

If you pooled the contentment quotient for every supporter across the league, this could well be collectively the best time of the season.

For all the pain suffered by the players with its shuttle runs, tyre flips and uphill piggybacks, pre-season brings a strange state of bliss for those who look on.

It seems to contain a mind-altering opiate that erases all ills from the season just past and floods the brain with the enriching optimism of a fresh start.

The Red Bull-funded recruitment drive means that even Newcastle’s long-suffering support base can look ahead with excitement.

With no annoying league table to offer a crushing reality check, there is a swirling world of possibilities for the campaign ahead.

Of course, if your top stars have all cleared off over the summer and been replaced with a bunch of fringe players only vaguely recognisable to their relatives then that may be tempered somewhat. But scan the Prem’s ins and outs list and there looks to be no basket cases this season.

The Red Bull-funded recruitment drive means that even Newcastle’s long-suffering support base can look ahead with excitement.

The former Falcons are one of two clubs, along with Northampton, for whom pre-season has been particularly noteworthy this year.

They spent a week at the Red Bull family home in Austria on a trip to the organisation’s state-of-the-art Athlete Performance Centre near Salzburg. For a radically overhauled new squad containing more than 20 new signings, carrying F1 cars around made for a shiny new spin on traditional team-building exercises.

🏁 New @redbullracing pit crew reporting for duty! 💪 pic.twitter.com/JU52hKkoyi

— Newcastle Red Bulls (@NCL_RedBulls) August 19, 2026

“We got so much from that.” said Newcastle head coach Dan McFarland. “One of the biggest points of going out there was this connection with Red Bull, understanding what our owners were about. They were fantastic in giving us a chance to experience the Red Bull kind of mentality, meeting athletes out there and having an experience which we genuinely couldn’t have had anywhere else.

“We also worked very hard. It was 35 degrees and the lads had some big training sessions out there, so it was a great combination of understanding the culture and getting to know each other as a group and working hard.”

The new arrivals returned a lot closer from an experience which also included HYROX hell with elite endurance athlete Jack Dearden, being used as stooges for tricks by mountain bike king Danny MacAskill and letting their hair down with water sports on Lake Fuschlsee.

“It was quite bipolar,” said Scotland prop Elliot Millar Mills. “The first three days were hard graft, work and loads of meetings then suddenly it switched to having fun. We spent a lot of time on team bonding.”

Meanwhile Northampton crossed continents to visit Colombo where they beat the Asia Pacific Lions select side.

While they were there, some of the Saints squad took to the cricket field as part of an International Rugby Stars XI to take on Sri Lanka Cricketing Legends.

They were proper legends too so it was no surprise the Saints crew came a distant second, but Alex Coles and Tommy Freeman will forever be able to dine out on dismissing Aravinda De Silva and Mahela Jayawardene respectively. Freeman did go for 19 off his single over, mind.

“That was an excellent experience, despite the fact that Tommy Freeman dropped Jayawardene off my bowling,” said Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson.

“The benefits of travelling together are really obvious in terms of the lads getting to spend lots of time together and getting to know each other better. But also the chance to immerse ourselves in something totally different, experience a new culture together.”

Other clubs have also chosen to travel to change up the scenery over the summer. Sale flew to Portugal for a training camp while Bath and Leicester both went to France, Bath taking on Top 14 side Perpignan in a friendly while the Tigers faced off against Pro D2 opposition Béziers. Harlequins hopped over to Jersey; Saracens rolled down to Cornwall where they played the Pirates last Friday.

In contrast Exeter only made it as far as their usual pre-season stop of Exmouth where they wrestled themselves to a standstill on the beach. Bristol and Gloucester did not go anywhere at all but mixed things up with training ground run-outs against opposition brought in from the outside.

Each to their own with many variations. The search for the perfect pre-season goes on…

The first round of Prem Cup games will lead to a few hot takes as to whose has been the most effective but, really, supporters should not allow the balloon to deflate if this period goes against their club.

Coaches are stress-testing and experimenting, trying combinations and getting minutes into as many legs as possible. While none of them would turn down a win, it is not the be-all and end-all.

These cup ties, mixed with the friendlies the clubs have arranged in and around them (Saints, in keeping with their exotic summer, are taking on Black Lion from Georgia in their Prem Cup bye week), represent a notoriously inaccurate form guide.

Coaches are stress-testing and experimenting, trying combinations and getting minutes into as many legs as possible. While none of them would turn down a win, it is not the be-all and end-all.

Both of last season’s Prem finalists – Northampton and Exeter – lost games in pre-season a year ago.

If Saracens – another club whose players took to the cricket field over the summer against Somerset in an MND fundraiser – beat Northampton at the StoneX on Saturday, it will not mean they are going to succeed the Saints as champions.

What matters is the weekend of 25 September when the league season begins.