Category: Rugby Union

Northampton and Bath have a chance to restore English rugby to its pedestal, but French foes will have other ideas

It has not happened very often. Just once in the past 20 years, to be precise. Winning a single trophy is hard enough but English clubs hoisting aloft both the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup in the same season would be a proper rarity. Other than the Covid-afflicted year of 2020 when Exeter Chiefs and Bristol Bears prevailed in mostly empty stadiums, the last time there was a Premiership double was in May 2004.

Back then Wasps and Harlequins were the happy couple, beating Toulouse and Montferrand respectively. This week also features two Anglo-French finals with Northampton facing Bordeaux-Bègles in the main event and Bath tackling Lyon in Friday night’s amuse bouche. A measure of the challenge facing the English duo is that French clubs have hoovered up seven of the past eight available trophies, with South Africa collecting the other.

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• Bath 43-15 Leicester
• Dunn scores try in 184th Premiership match for Bath

It could yet be that these two teams will meet again in this season’s Premiership final at Twickenham. If so Leicester will have to look for some different solutions. This meeting of the leagues’s top two was compared to a “heavyweight boxing clash” by Bath’s head of rugby, Johann van Graan, but even the ability of Leicester’s defence to soak up plenty of punishment could not save them in the end.

Bath’s first-choice forwards are increasingly taking no prisoners and this seven-try victory on a glorious early summer evening was the latest reason to fancy they will eventually end up as champions. The highlight was a memorable score from Tom Dunn, setting a new club record for the most Premiership appearances in the famous blue, black and white striped jersey. The hooker’s extravagant dummy and subsequent 20-metre sprint to the line would have been collector’s items even in a game of social tag rugby

Research shows they make a major difference to 2.28% of positions, while play-off semi-finals also look redundant

The business end of the domestic season has arrived and the Premiership and United Rugby Championship tables, as ever, are being carefully scrutinised. Two from Bristol, Sale and Saracens are now vying to make the Premiership playoffs with two games left while the race for the URC top eight will boil down to the final weekend.

At which point some know-all will intone the well-worn mantra: bonus points will be crucial. And we’ll all nod solemnly and start contemplating how Team X or Team Y can best set about scoring either four tries or losing by seven points or fewer. Without necessarily stopping to think whether the cold, hard mathematics support that supposition – or indeed ever have done.