Category: Premiership Rugby

• Internationals must have 10 weeks off

• Lions not available until third round of Prem

Saracens’ Mark McCall is the latest Prem director of rugby to question player welfare regulations that he believes have left internationals undercooked for the season’s start.

Guidelines mandated by the Professional Rugby Board – established as part of the club-country agreement – dictate that England players who took part in summer tours of Argentina and the US have 10 weeks off. They were available for the first set of Prem games last weekend, but could not take part in the two rounds of Prem Cup matches before that.

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High-profile takeover has rejuvenated an ailing club, with the opportunity for Steve Diamond’s team to take flight and grow

Don’t mention the F-word. Such has been the pace of the Red Bull rebrand that one Newcastle official joked there would be spot fines for anyone who forgets it is no longer the Falcons giving them flight.

Energy drinks are in, feathered friends out, but the feelgood factor now coursing through the north-east promises more than just a dopamine hit. For the club, who only a few months ago were exploring a loan from their league rivals to stay afloat, and the revamped Prem, there is a feeling that the Red Bull revolution can be seminal.

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Season-opener between Sale and Gloucester promises to be a cracker in English rugby’s new frontier

Th ne PREM seas sta o Thursd nigh wi Sal Shar hosti Glouce befo Harleq enterta Bat an Newcas Re Bul fac Sarac on Frid.

That is a sentence, as uneasy on the eye as it may be, of which you can just about make sense. Much like the Premiership’s decision to lose a few letters as part of its rebrand.

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Defending champions Bath are favourites to retain their title but Saracens will be boosted by Owen Farrell’s return

• The Breakdown: Prem rebrand aims to turn heads

There have been six different title winners in as many seasons but the defending champions are favourites to buck that trend. In Johan van Graan Bath have a relentlessly process-driven coach, not someone who would allow an ounce of complacency to creep in, and they have Ollie Lawrence and Jaco Coetzee back for the start of the season after long-term injuries.

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English top flight’s push to attract a younger audience is accelerating and relegation may soon be a thing of the past

Times are changing so rapidly in rugby that even the competition names now have go-faster stripes. Farewell to the familiar old Premiership and welcome, kicking off on a Thursday this year, to the Gallagher Prem. Or, strictly speaking, PREM. Who needs boring extra lower-case syllables or superfluous vowels in 2025 anyway?

Even the league’s updated logo is now bright orange to denote “intensity” and the mission to woo new fans – the younger the better – is accelerating by the week. Ask Rob Calder, Prem Rugby’s suitably bearded head of growth, what he thinks, for example, about the traditional rhythm of promotion and relegation and he does not hold back. “There’s a Victorian interest in promotion and relegation but actually that’s existential for a lot of clubs.” Sorry, are you suggesting the meritocratic English club pyramid is a Victorian concept? “Yeah. I think it’s old school. If you want the sport to grow you need to grow the conditions for ambition and investment.”

This is an extract taken from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To sign up, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

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• Players could be rested for matches on welfare grounds

• Lions squad mandated 10 weeks off after summer tour

Steve Borthwick has been urged to consider resting British & Irish Lions players during England’s autumn internationals campaign on welfare grounds by Prem Rugby head coaches.

Players who appeared on the Lions tour in Australia over the summer were mandated 10 weeks off, ensuring they will miss the first two rounds of the new season and be available for three before England begin their November campaign against the Wallabies.

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Champagne tries and offloads to retired greats and future stars, here are the highlights of the 2024-25 season

1) Leinster 34-37 Northampton, 3 May. One of the great ram-raids.

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Fly-half relishes end to his 10-year wait for a league title before homing in on British & Irish Lions challenge

Had Handrè Pollard done his homework he might have known what was coming – for Finn Russell has previous with intercepts when attacking Twickenham’s south stand. It was playing that way that he picked off Owen Farrell’s pass before streaking clear in the madcap 38-38 draw between England and Scotland in 2019. And he was at it again on Saturday, coming up with the decisive moment in Bath’s dogged Premiership final victory over Leicester.

On this occasion he did not finish off the try himself – you suspect he probably could have – instead flinging a nonchalant pass inside to the onrushing Max Ojomoh. In a final short on champagne moments, it put the fizz in Bath’s performance, extending their lead to 20-7 before a second penalty of the match proved pivotal in ensuring the 29-year wait for a Premiership title was over.

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Bath ended their 29 year wait with victory at Twickenham

4 mins. Leicester win said scrum and there’s another one a minute later after more poor Batch handling. This second one brings down the full malevolence of the Tigers pack to crumble the Bath eight and bring about a penalty. Pollard pings a beautiful touchfinder deep into attacking territory.

2 mins. The crafty kick off is very nearly gathered by Cracknell, but the ball ends up pinging about a bit before Spencer gets his hands on it and punts it away. There’s a few carries by Leicester in their own half before a knock-on brings about the first scrum of the match.

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• Reset will promote ‘gladiatorial nature’ of club game

• Prem targets playing in US in run-up to 2031 World Cup

Premiership Rugby has rebranded England’s top division as the Gallagher Prem as part of a wide-ranging reboot that includes plans to take a fixture to the United States in the coming years and kicking off next season on a Thursday night.

Unperturbed by the existential threat posed by the R360 breakaway league, PRL on Saturday relaunches the Premiership on the day that Bath face Leicester in the final at Twickenham.

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Rival coaches Johann van Graan and Michael Cheika have rebuilt their sides along similar lines but Bath are favourites

It has been a while but the old firm of English club rugby are finally back. Between 1978 and 1997 Bath and Leicester collectively won 15 national knockout trophies and over the first 15 years of the league’s existence they claimed 12 titles between them. Their reunion at Twickenham is akin to those other 90s chart-toppers, Oasis and Blur, dusting down their favourite guitars and appearing on stage together.

The temptation is to dive head first into a foaming tub of nostalgia and wallow in the rekindled rivalry. If anyone had predicted in 1996 that Bath would not win another domestic title in the next 29 years they would have been laughed out of the convivial old Rec clubhouse. Leicester, similarly, thought the ABC Club and the Tigers’ steely winning mentality would live for ever.

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Flanker Ted Hill has been called ‘a freak’ by his captain as the 26-year-old waits for another chance with England

Is it a bird or a plane? No, it’s probably “SuperTed”. If Bath win this year’s Premiership final the chances are their rangy, athletic flanker Ted Hill will have played a prominent role. This week his captain, Ben Spencer, called him a “freak” and various seasoned judges have compared him with illustrious former back-rowers ranging from Kieran Read and Jerome Kaino to Pierre Spies and Tom Croft.

During this year’s Six Nations Maro Itoje suggested similarities between the 26-year-old and “Captain America or Superman” and suggested he was “a man carved out of Greek stone”. Bath’s head coach, Johann van Graan, believes likewise. “I think he’s one of the best players in the league and his athletic ability is special. There’s not a lot he can’t do, really.”

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• Fly-half endured torrid season at Racing 92

• Farrell agrees summer return including a pay cut

Owen Farrell has agreed an immediate return to Saracens after a torrid season with Racing 92. The 33-year-old former England captain will join his boyhood club as a player-coach this summer on a five-year deal.

Saracens have secured Farrell’s signing after agreeing a compensation package with Racing 92 of about €200,000 (£170m) – significantly less than the €500,000 paid by the French club last year – and reaching a deal over personal terms. Farrell had signed a two-year deal with the Top 14 side but endured an injury-hit season and informed the club of his desire to return to the Premiership towards the end of the campaign.

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There was a time when the team playing at the Rec were the dominant force in English club rugby and there are signs they may be on the rise once again

The first thing anyone who cares says when they find out you’re a sports journalist is to ask whether or not you were at whichever big game was on that weekend. The second, after you’ve explained, apologetically, that you don’t actually follow football, is usually an awkward pause. There are all sorts of reasons why you may prefer any other sort of sport, but after 20 years of variations on this conversation, I’ve learned that unless you want to come across like someone who insists actually they prefer art-house cinema and free jazz, it’s best to have a straightforward explanation. Mine is that I grew up in Bath.

They do play football in Bath, out at Twerton Park. The club have never been in the Football League (right now they’re in National League South), and most weeks they draw a crowd of around a thousand. Which isn’t so very many more than you’ll find crowded around the stone balustrades of the city’s parade gardens, trying to peer across the weir and see into the Rec when the rugby club have a home game. Bath’s football has always been bad. But in the 80s and 90s Bath’s rugby was so good that the brand still stands for something, even after they have been mediocre for a large part of the past 30 years.

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Team featuring Jeremy Guscott and Mike Catt won Bath’s most recent title before professional era changed the game

It doesn’t take long to realise that one of England’s greatest attacking minds is still as sharp as ever. Asked what is keeping him busy at the moment, Brian Ashton, now 78, shoots back: “Staying alive.” There are many ways to emphasise how long it has been since Bath won the title but a two-word riposte from the man who led them to the league and cup double in 1995-96 does it better than most.

It is well documented that the dawn of professionalism was not kind to Bath, how it both enabled their rivals to catch up and derailed the country’s dominant side in the following years. As the former full-back Jon Callard has put it: “Bath got lost in professionalism, sometimes players forgot the value of the shirt.” In the final throes of the amateur era, however, Bath were the trailblazers.

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