Monday 25 March 2019 14:06, UK
Gallagher Premiership relegation and the upcoming European Champions Cup quarter-finals feature in Stuart Barnes' talking points this week...
1. In these depressing days, this was the best news I have read for a while: an end to the jackal. At least it was reported thus in my Sunday paper. I have long argued against the jackal for reasons primarily linked to the aesthetics of the game but also for safety reasons.
Jackals have evolved into one of the most important parts of the package that goes into making a team. Essentially their role is to steal possession but in the process the game has become slower, more static and negative. I have written about this in detail in my newspaper column today.
Let's just say I think that if World Rugby go through with the abolition of the jackal it will be for the good of the game.
2. Only five remaining matches and Leicester are a mere five points from relegation. In all my years writing and broadcasting on the sport I never thought I would write such a sentence.
It is hard to know where to start. Obviously there are long-standing problems on the pitch but there has to be some responsibility taken on the part of the club's management. They have been unsure of their decision making when it comes to team management. Men who might have stayed were released. Men who perhaps should have departed stayed beyond their time.
The decision to make Georden Murphy their manager earlier this season, when defence was such an issue, is definitely open to debate. Leicester are in a crisis and the manager - great Leicester player that he was - is a rookie.
3. Having said that, I still don't believe Leicester will be relegated. I have got my head around the concept of Leicester, twinned with relegation, but George Ford is simply too good a football player to be relegated.
Admittedly the game was done and dusted when he grabbed what was left of Friday night's defeat against Northampton but his vision and class shone clear. He needs to be told to run the team. For too long - club and country - he has been content to play his designated part.
Murphy and his management can take a holiday and let the fly-half focus on playing and running the show with his fluidity.
4. Newcastle remain bottom but, like Leicester, I don't think they will go down. Just as I think Ford is too fine a player to be relegated, so I regard Dean Richards as too clever a manager not to somehow extricate his side from the mess in which they have been wallowing all season.
They are finally winning, have some momentum...which in this case can be translated as self belief...and are within touching distance of Worcester, Bristol and Leicester. Maybe even Wasps at a push.
5. Wasps let Danny Cipriani go, Gloucester snap him up. Wasps plummet, Gloucester are soaring. It's no coincidence. The fly-half is one of the few English rugby players with a serious rugby intellect.
Others may be quicker, stronger, kick further but only Ford rivals him for a rugby brain. Everybody seems obsessed with size these days; what Danny is doing at Gloucester is gently reminding people the size of a rugby brain is probably the most important aspect of a professional rugby player.
6. Chris Boyd is another brainy rugby bloke. The Hurricanes head man has taken his time but he's got Northampton Saints playing with a pace and purpose rarely seen this side of the equator.
The stodgy days of recent seasons are being left behind. Once a team who played it all booming percussion, now there are subtleties to the tunes Northampton are playing. They were a joy to watch at Welford Road.
7. Spearheading their drive into the top half of the table is their South African scrum-half, Cobus Reinach. He has a mature head on him, allied with the speed of a young sprinter. He devastated Leicester.
What an irony. In the home of the current English scrum-half who has devolved into little more than a box-kicker. Youngs plays to instructions for England and often does a decent job. But his sharpness is missing. Slow out of the blocks, sloppy passing. Murphy has dropped him this season.
Hard to believe but right now he is not, though he should be, an integral part of the Tigers fight against relegation.
8. Before commentating on the Bedford Blues vs Cornish Pirates match, I watched the Chiefs win impressively in Pretoria against the previously unbeaten Bulls.
Damian McKenzie spearheaded a sharp performance but what sticks in my memory is the most perfect tackle imaginable. It's the second half, folks, you'll have to have a look back and find it. Perfect technique and pure power combined. It was almost poetic.
9. Bedford went on to win the game easily. There's no doubt that automatic promotion takes something away from the latter end of the Greene King IPA Championship season but it is imperative that the best team, the one likeliest to be most competitive over the course of a Premiership season, goes up and not a side who played it perfectly for two games.
It looks like London Irish will be promoted and that is as it should be. They are by some distance the strongest squad in this league.
10. It's the European quarter-finals next weekend. Saracens are expected to beat Glasgow with something to spare but I reckon the Scottish side could make life tricky for their English hosts. Saracens beat them in both their pool games but Dave Rennie's team were hugely competitive. He is a wily coach and will have a few ideas.
Saracens will need to be much better than they were in the first half against Harlequins. They probably will be - they are that kind of side. For the best bet of a shock, try Edinburgh at home to Munster, for the best match I can't see beyond what could be an all-French classic between Racing 92 and Toulouse and for the most predictable of the four ties, stick with a Leinster win against Ulster.
Enjoy your week,
Stuart
