Season Preview Part 1

By Mark H
September 1 2005

The new season has a new sponsor for the first time in five years, Guinness taking over from Zurich; a new end of season system, the top four now qualifying for the play-offs; and a new trophy, with an Anglo-Welsh Powergen Cup incorporating the twelve top tier English sides and the four Welsh regions.

So what prospects then?  Well, the big names have been coming over, with Justin Marshall and Carlos Spencer leaving the All Blacks behind for Leeds and Northampton; Directors of Rugby and head coaches have been replaced with new coaching set ups at Gloucester, Leicester, Irish and Wasps, as well as minor changes at Northampton, Saracens and Worcester; and there’s the welcome return of Bristol (and from a purely non-rugby point of view, their pasties) after two seasons away.

 

So who’s going to win?  Well, that’s a bit harder to predict.  I do think though, that there’s two definite groups in the Premiership this season; the top five and the bottom seven.  Although one side from my bottom seven may, with luck, crack the top five, I’d only be looking at the one.  I’m also not going to predict individual positions, apart from top, bottom and Falcons (so there’s a clue), but instead I’ll say who I think will finish in the top, middle and bottom four.  So then, we start with:-

 

Bath – whatever you thought of their style of play last season (and I’m not a great fan all of the time, but they do have their moments), you can’t dispute that they have the best pack in the Premiership, and the most astute man in charge in John Connolly.  As ever, the pack will be vital to their chances, but not for potential weakness, more for their strength.  Depending upon which way ex-Bath and now England head coach Andy Robinson decides to go, they could miss four of their first choice front five on international weekends, and the fifth – Lee Mears – may not be that far away from a call-up.  Add the kicking off Chris Malone and Olly Barkley, and good recruitment elsewhere in the backs – Stevo and David Bory stand out – and Bath should be there and thereabouts at the end of the season.

 

Bristol – much as I hate to say it, a difficult first season back awaits.  The team that got them up won’t necessarily be split up, but added to with signings of the quality of Brian Lima, Mark Regan and Gareth Llewellyn.  Unfortunately, it could still be a struggle for them, with a good start a necessity.  All of their first three games are winnable – Bath and Gloucester at home split by a trip to Kingston Park – and it will be a great confidence boost to get at least one win from those three games.  Richard Hill has done a great job so far at the Memorial Ground; eleventh place this season (or better) will be his greatest success.

 

Gloucester – very much one of the unknown quantities this season.  They were awful at the end of last season – teams don’t go to Kingsholm and win as regularly as they did, and it was somewhat inevitable that Nigel Melville would be sacrificed.  Dean Ryan has stepped up, and will look to stamp his personality and style on the club.  Ludovic Mercier has returned from Pau, and knowing how successful he was with the boot on his first stint with the club, it would not be a surprise to see him kicking between 80 and 90 per cent again.  They’ve got a cutting edge with Garvey and Simpson-Daniel, and the best young full back in the league in Jon Goodridge; Phil Vickery will hopefully return, and their lineout should be as good as ever.  So why am I not impressed?  Well, the Glaws of 2004/05 was in disarray, both on and off the pitch; they can turn it around - and I think they’ll do very well in the cups – but the faithful may have to endure another season lower than they demand.

 

Leeds – after the escape of last season, the rebuilding in this.  The Powergen Cup holders have made one of the more interesting signings in Justin Marshall, plus what I believe is the best of any in Gordon Bulloch, who was wrongfully ignored during the Lions series.  The pack will continue to win good ball – Tom palmer and Stuart Hooper surely now can’t be far from England honours (although who knows anything where Robinson is concerned), but can the backs do anything with the ball?  The potential is there, as you can see the influence of Andre Snyman has had on Messrs Bell, Doherty and Biggs, but they mustn’t leave it as late as they did last season.  The Heineken Cup may prove to be a distraction, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Tykes do what Falcons did last season and eliminate Perpignan at the group stages.

 

Leicester – the new era starts here, for a season, when no doubt another new era will start.  Pat Howard takes over from John Wells for a year, before (presumably) handing over to a combination of Richard Cockerill and Neil Back.  Tigers will miss back on the pitch, plus that big bloke who used to play second row and always had a trophy in his hand, and it remains to be seen how they are replaced.  The major benefit that Tigers have is that they’ve been blooding their youngsters for years, and it’s time for players like Louis Deacon to make the shirt their own and keep it for the next ten years.  A lot of people think that Leicester may not do as well as in recent seasons, to which my answer is – Rowntree, Chuter, Kay, Moody, Corry, Ellis, Goode, Gibson, Lloyd, Healey, Smith, Murphy.  And that’s without exciting new talent such as Ross Broadfoot and Tom Varndell.

 

London Irish – can’t score tries (oops, thought that was what was supposed to follow those two words). Irish will be better this season simply because they have to be.  Brian Smith, one of the key men behind Bath’s revival, has taken up the reins, and made (among others) a great signing in Olivier Magne IF the Frenchman can fall in love with the game again.  The loss of the now-retired Mark Mapletoft will be key, as for so long in the past two seasons he has looked the spark in their backs – Barry Everitt is an excellent kicker, but will need to broaden his game if Irish are to score those tries, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Mike Catt playing at fly-half if the try drought continues.  Nick Kennedy, the fast-improving lock, and Delon Armitage (who’s just fast) are the men to look for.

 

London Wasps – the three-time defending champions look to equal Leicester’s record of four in a row this time around and there’s nothing to say they won’t do it.  As with a number of teams, the start will be a good indicator, but in the Waspies’ case, it’s more to see exactly where they are in relation to the top four come the end of November.  The club know how to win the big matches, and use the system to better effect that any other side in England (and whether you agree with the play-offs – I do – or not, it’s the same rules for everyone at the start of the season).  There’s not much to say about the personnel, except as in the case of Bath and Leicester, they may be hardest hit by international call ups, but let me throw in one imponderable – if there is a change in the England coaching set up, will the RFU be brave enough to go for Shaun Edwards, the best English coach currently operating in the Premiership?

 

Northampton – after eight months of terror came three minutes of absolute hell for Saints supporters.  After Jeremy Staunton’s penalty miss – and that’s the only reason – kept Saints up, Budge Pountney and Paul Grayson had to recruit big.  Carlos Spencer had already signed, and others to come in most notably included Dan Browne from Grenoble, Sean Lamont from Glasgow, and Irish centres David Quinlan and Seamus Mallon, with Pat Barnard (from Western Province) and Sam Harding (from Canterbury) to come at the end of the Currie Cup and NPC respectively.  Spencer will get the headlines, but it’s crucial that he stays fit as there isn’t a great deal of experienced cover behind him.  The loss of Andrew Blowers will also be (pardon the pun) a big blow, although Browne showed in the pre-season friendly in Munster that he could be a very useful replacement.  Saints are one of those teams that could win it if it goes right or drop if it goes wrong.  Time to choose.  The start, Leicester, Bath and Gloucester away, with Falcons at home, will say a lot.

 

Sale – on their day, the most exciting side in the country, but now finding out that the price to pay for that excitement is losing their key players to international duty for six weeks of the season.  Not for Sale the scraping past the strugglers, they are excellent at destroying the weaker sides but still lose matches that they should win.  In order to prepare for the player losses, Phillippe Saint-Andre has brought in cover, with Daniel Larrachea, the fly-half-cum-full back from Bayonne, looking about the best.  Bryan Redpath – the biggest name of the absentees from last season – will be sorely missed.  One thing that Sale will always have though is Steve Hanley trying to prove, as he has every season since 1999, Clive Woodward wrong in his assessment that he can’t tackle.  If they’re in the top four at the end of the Six Nations, they’ll be there at the end; they don’t, however, want to have to play catch up in the last weeks of the season.

 

Saracens – whatever Steve Diamond did to transform good players into a good team, the Fez heads will want him to do again, as the Premiership has been waiting for seven years for another strong Sarries squad.  This, finally, is it.  Andy Farrell will get all the press, but he’ll also get all the pressure, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t see his best until the bigger games at the business end of the season.  In the meantime, the pack will be as strong as ever, with the expected back row of Taine Randell, David Seymour and Hugh Vyvyan combining speed of foot with speed of brain.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Seymour, set for a heavy workload in the sad absence of Richard Hill, challenging for a place on England’s summer tour in nine month’s time and, by rights, Vyv should already be a fixture in the national team, let alone squad.  In the backs, Castaignede is still a genius, and if the Frenchman’s influence, along with Tevita Vaikona’s adaptation to the fifteen man game, can rub off on Farrell, then Premiership grounds could see a lot of hand-wobbling this season.

 

Worcester – after a successful first season comes the difficult second one, difficult because as teams came to know the Warriors’ pattern, so they’ll find ways of getting round it.  The pack will be the side’s strength again, and news that Pat Sanderson has committed himself to another two years is a welcome boost to a collection of players that can be dangerously unsung at times, with Chris Horsman and Ricky Gillies among the many looking to star again.  It’s behind them though, that the most recruitment has come, and the arrival of Andy Gomarsall and Shane Drahm will (if they can get into the team ahead of Matt Powell and James Brown) will give them extra options.  Also, by the look of him in the sevens, French signing Nicolas le Roux, joining from Brive, looks as though he will light up the league.  Worcester won’t win the Premiership, but they shouldn’t go down either.

 

There’s only one team left to look at, and you’ll have to wait until later today for them!