Bristol vs Northampton, Friday (19.45), rd 6

[Adam_P]

Fair play Bristol have really turned this around and ended up dominating.

It's a joke that in a league of 10 clubs we can't have a season uninterrupted by international selections.

[Scrumhead]

Why do people keep saying ‘it’s a joke’ etc?

As frustrating as it may be, there aren’t enough weeks in a year to have 0 overlap. It’s simple maths.

BTW, I say that as a Quins fan going in to an arguably ‘must win’ game minus 6 of our best players.

[Which Tyler]

Because people believed the lies that losing 3 teams would end the clashes, whilst not realising that 6 is a smaller number than 8-9.

Now they're upset because 6 is still a smaller number than 8-9.
It's frustrating that, having exposed this repeatedly last year, and the year before, we have to expose it again.
I suspect it'll be frustrating again in January.


Nill points pour Saints.
If Bath and Exeter can both grab home wins, there'll be real daylight between top4 and the rest

[Adam_P]

Give up England players only for match day weekends as per other nations, play fewer international fixtures, change the start or end point of the season

[Which Tyler]

Sacrifice player welfare, and watch clubs go bankrupt, you mean? Oh, and back to the early noughties for outright warfare between RFU and PRL - Kieth Barwell would be proud, I guess.

Worth demembering that the RFU pay the clubs £33M a year for these releases. Given the current state of club finances, I'm not sure that adding an extra £3.3M per club to the debt column would be terribly useful

[Adam_P]

Fewer internationals in the calendar would definitely be bad for player welfare

[Which Tyler]

Not having jobs would be, but that was a reference to "change the start or end point of the season" - or did you mean you'd create extra weeks by having a shorter season?

[Banquo]

Pollock is sensational for his age.

[Beasties]

Pollock is sensational for his age.

#Pepperissolastyear

[fivepointer]

Its not ideal being with your England players but Saints team on paper looked pretty good to me and Bristol were without Genge and Randall and lost van Rensburg early on.
Bristol took a long time to get going but when they did they looked very good again. Some of their continuity play was just outstanding.
Pollock is already some player. He could be an England regular for a decade or more.

[Banquo]

Pollock is sensational for his age.

#Pepperissolastyear

Fraid so. #gametime

[FKAS]

Pollock is sensational for his age.

Yeah, the strength to weight ratio is ridiculous. If he fills out a bit and keeps that explosiveness he'll be incredible. Plays with a real swagger as well, a bit more experience to know when to chance his hand and when not. Next summer looks a likely time for him to be capped at this rate.

[Adam_P]

Its not ideal being with your England players but Saints team on paper looked pretty good to me and Bristol were without Genge and Randall and lost van Rensburg early on.
Bristol took a long time to get going but when they did they looked very good again. Some of their continuity play was just outstanding.
Pollock is already some player. He could be an England regular for a decade or more.

We were without our first choice 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 15. Granted two of those are to injury, but if they weren't injured they'd be with England. That's too much disruption to the backline.

[Mellsblue]

Its not ideal being with your England players but Saints team on paper looked pretty good to me and Bristol were without Genge and Randall and lost van Rensburg early on.
Bristol took a long time to get going but when they did they looked very good again. Some of their continuity play was just outstanding.
Pollock is already some player. He could be an England regular for a decade or more.

We were without our first choice 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 15. Granted two of those are to injury, but if they weren't injured they'd be with England. That's too much disruption to the backline.

Stop whining. This was an inevitable consequence of your links with Bedford Blues and Bedford School!
Sarries had the same problem with their pack not too long ago but they didn’t whine, they just kept winning. All you have to do is sign a load of top line SH replacements. Simples!

[Oakboy]

Pollock is sensational for his age.

Agreed. Should he concentrate on playing 7 or 8 to enhance his international potential?

[FKAS]

Its not ideal being with your England players but Saints team on paper looked pretty good to me and Bristol were without Genge and Randall and lost van Rensburg early on.
Bristol took a long time to get going but when they did they looked very good again. Some of their continuity play was just outstanding.
Pollock is already some player. He could be an England regular for a decade or more.

We were without our first choice 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 15. Granted two of those are to injury, but if they weren't injured they'd be with England. That's too much disruption to the backline.

Last season Tigers were losing both tightheads and both second rows to every England squad and wasn't that long ago both 9s as well. You know it's going to happen so the club has to then adapt their squad make up to compensate for it.

Saints had a more experienced 10 on the bench and instead threw in a youngster. The backline was full of players that had already featured so far this season by the flyhalf and Seabrook who's played plenty in the Prem before now.

[Which Tyler]

#gametime

He's not exactly lacking.
About to start his 4th from this batch of 6 matches, with 1 bench appearance.
Pretty close to the perfect balance of game time and R&R if you ask me (ideally, Id switch one of those starts to the bench, or even a week off)

[Banquo]

#gametime

He's not exactly lacking.
About to start his 4th from this batch of 6 matches, with 1 bench appearance.
Pretty close to the perfect balance of game time and R&R if you ask me (ideally, Id switch one of those starts to the bench, or even a week off)

fair enough i which case #profile.

[Banquo]

Its not ideal being with your England players but Saints team on paper looked pretty good to me and Bristol were without Genge and Randall and lost van Rensburg early on.
Bristol took a long time to get going but when they did they looked very good again. Some of their continuity play was just outstanding.
Pollock is already some player. He could be an England regular for a decade or more.

We were without our first choice 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 15. Granted two of those are to injury, but if they weren't injured they'd be with England. That's too much disruption to the backline.

Last season Tigers were losing both tightheads and both second rows to every England squad and wasn't that long ago both 9s as well. You know it's going to happen so the club has to then adapt their squad make up to compensate for it.

Saints had a more experienced 10 on the bench and instead threw in a youngster. The backline was full of players that had already featured so far this season by the flyhalf and Seabrook who's played plenty in the Prem before now.

The obvious answer is don't clash prem matches with intl windows. So something has to give, as we don't want our top clubs not to want to have raft of England players they've developed; is it play offs, is it Europe? Is it a smaller Prem?

[Which Tyler]

]The obvious answer is don't clash prem matches with intl windows. So something has to give, as we don't want our top clubs not to want to have raft of England players they've developed; is it play offs, is it Europe? Is it a smaller Prem?

Bingo! (IMO)
Remove clashes, and you remove the (official) justification for them.
Though after this long, I have come to accept and appreciate them for what they are, but I still don't think they're a remotely good way of crowning the best team of the season - SFs are especially egregious

[Banquo]

]The obvious answer is don't clash prem matches with intl windows. So something has to give, as we don't want our top clubs not to want to have raft of England players they've developed; is it play offs, is it Europe? Is it a smaller Prem?

Bingo! (IMO)
Remove clashes, and you remove the (official) justification for them.
Though after this long, I have come to accept and appreciate them for what they are, but I still don't think they're a remotely good way of crowning the best team of the season - SFs are especially egregious

we also don't need almost every club competing in Europe. Make it a more Elite super comp with less games, even a seeded knock out- I get the impression interest has started to drift anyway.

[Mellsblue]

]The obvious answer is don't clash prem matches with intl windows. So something has to give, as we don't want our top clubs not to want to have raft of England players they've developed; is it play offs, is it Europe? Is it a smaller Prem?

Bingo! (IMO)
Remove clashes, and you remove the (official) justification for them.
Though after this long, I have come to accept and appreciate them for what they are, but I still don't think they're a remotely good way of crowning the best team of the season - SFs are especially egregious

we also don't need almost every club competing in Europe. Make it a more Elite super comp with less games,

Seconded.

[Which Tyler]

I think you know my preference there, but for those who don't (or don't bother connecting proposals to posters):

Champions Cup should be teams challenging to be the champions of their league - the elite clubs.
European cup should be teams from Europe.

Champ Cup: 4 pools of 4.
4 Prem teams,
6 T14 teams,
5 URC teams (excepting Saffers)
Previous year's Challenge Cup winners.

Challenge Cup for the next 4, 6, 5 and 1
European Plate for the rest + Georgians, Romanians, Spanish, Portugese etc.

In England, the Championship should be larger than the Prem, so that they don't just get fallow weeks whilst the Prem are playing in Europe (or have a 2nd domestic cup, where the the champ teams play ND1 teams, similar to the PRC) - assuming that the clubs wouldn't actually prefer fallow weeks for R&R

[Banquo]

I think you know my preference there, but for those who don't (or don't bother connecting proposals to posters):

Champions Cup should be teams challenging to be the champions of their league - the elite clubs.
European cup should be teams from Europe.

Champ Cup: 4 pools of 4.
4 Prem teams,
6 T14 teams,
5 URC teams (excepting Saffers)
Previous year's Challenge Cup winners.

Challenge Cup for the next 4, 6, 5 and 1
European Plate for the rest + Georgians, Romanians, Spanish, Portugese etc.

In England, the Championship should be larger than the Prem, so that they don't just get fallow weeks whilst the Prem are playing in Europe (or have a 2nd domestic cup, where the the champ teams play ND1 teams, similar to the PRC) - assuming that the clubs wouldn't actually prefer fallow weeks for R&R

champ likely to be 14 teams- tho 21 teams above existing 12 have applied....leading to daft chat about 2 x 10 conferences. I'm afraid a tier2 cup would be a commercial dog.

[Puja]

I think that Europe might actually be on its way out (or at least an Engexit) - the Glaws chair was in the papers the other day saying it's not what people are interested in and it doesn't drive attendance or sponsorship as people are more interested in the domestic clashes, especially given the unlikelihood of an English team being anything other than huge underdogs. Combine that with the television coverage going to a different subscription service and the likely collapse of viewing figures that that will cause, and I think we'll be looking for the escape hatch (and possibly trying to drag the Welsh with us to get a bigger domestic league).

Puja