Pro12 badly needs a lift as rugby’s sleepy season kicks in
It was Phil Neville who suggested that maybe the Toon lads had already rescued the flip flops from the recesses of their wardrobes given they were marooned in that most ‘meh’ of places: mid-table. With little tangible to aim for and nothing of note to fear, the suggestion was that beachwear was the current attire of choice in the north-east.
Carver expressed his annoyance at that idea after last week’s Tyne-Wear derby loss to Sunderland at the Stadium of Light, pointing out by way of explanation that the 35 points which his side had accumulated thus far was not exactly the kind of total that would let a man in his position sleep soundly in his bed at night.
Whatever about Newcastle, there is a similar sense of summer ennui to be detected around rugby in this country in recent weeks, one born out of the natural comedown that followed Ireland’s oh-so-dramatic retention of the Six Nations title and the relative lack of glamorous ties on hand to assume the baton.
Leinster’s Rugby Champions Cup quarter-final defeat of Bath passed off with less fanfare than you would have expected and the absence of Munster and Ulster from the European knockout stages had already served to disenfranchise a major chunk of the island from the continental carnival at a date much earlier than to their liking.
Some of this may change on Sunday week should Leinster avenge their last eight loss to Toulon last year with what would be an unforeseen and thus seminal defeat of the same side at Marseille’s Velodrome, but in the meantime it is to the Guinness Pro12 that we must look for our rugby fix as the season winds down.
That, clearly, just doesn’t cut it for some.
Players, coaches and administrators continue to talk about how the Pro12 sits squarely alongside the English Premiership and Top 14 in the greater scheme of things. The ‘Big Three’ is anything but with the old Celtic League struggling to replicate the appeal of the other two regardless of what recent European success rates tell us.
This is the 14th time that the league has been run off since its advent back in 2001, when the Irish provinces were facing Welsh sides such as Llanelli and Caerphilly rather than the Blues and the Dragons, and it is an undeniable fact that the concept has yet to be embraced by a good many of the brethren who should be regular attendees at its altar.
The failures of the Welsh and Scots to adequately challenge Irish hegemony has been well documented and the lack of genuine competition at the league’s summit continues to be an issue. The Top 14 has thrown up seven different champions this past 10 years, the Premiership half-a-dozen and the Pro12 just four.
Three of them are Irish.
The finals each May tell us more about the different galaxies in which the respective leagues are orbiting. The last French and English league finals attracted over 80,000 each to Stade de France and Twickenham. The Pro12 decider was adequately catered for at the RDS where 19,200 people watched Leinster see off Glasgow.
It went under the radar at the time, what with the natural fear for the future of the European Cup, but there were serious expressions of interest in the idea of the Welsh regions quitting the Pro12 and standing under the Premiership umbrella with their English counterparts when the great debate over the Heineken Cup was at its zenith.
The fact is that the ties that bind the Celts and Italians are still worryingly flimsy after all this time living under the one roof and that is just one of the reasons why this next two months are so critical for a league that, despite its image problem and other issues down the years, has been a crucial cornerstone in the successes enjoyed by the provinces.
The changes to the qualification structures for the Champions Cup were designed with a view to injecting a greater degree of meritocracy into the Pro12 and, hopefully, imbue end-of-league fixtures that would otherwise have stood as dead rubbers into genuinely meaningful affairs with high stakes for at least one or both of the parties involved.
We shall soon see.
The other change has been the decision to nominate a venue for the final in mid-season rather than hand home advantage to the highest-ranked side that makes it through the play-offs. Belfast has that honour next month and, from a neutral perspective, it would be hard to argue with the thought that a first win for Scotland via Glasgow against hosts Ulster in Kingspan Stadium would tick most boxes.
Full house and new winners? That would do for starters.
Email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie Twitter: @Rackob
