April the cruellest month? Make it May, the month of the play-offs. Last Saturday Northampton, long‑time leaders and the best team in the Premiership, had their season taken away. On Wednesday, Bristol, leaders of the Championship for probably 75% of the season after beating us on the opening day, were the better side on the night, but over 160 minutes came up short. So Worcester go up and they spend another season dreaming of the Premiership.
And it goes on. On Saturday Saracens meet Bath at Twickenham; the best stoppers versus the best scorers. The neutral says Bath – George Ford, Jamie Joseph, Kyle Eastmond, Anthony Watson – because it’s attractive. The pragmatist looks at Owen Farrell running things, while Brad Barritt and Jacques Burger suffocate adventure.
A year ago Clermont Auvergne looked to be Burger’s swan song; a final game for the Namibian’s legs. He got injured and Saracens’ form dipped. At Franklin’s Gardens … well, Jim Mallinder, Northampton’s director of rugby, got it right when he said they knew what to expect from Saracens but couldn’t do anything about it.
On Saturday? It’ll probably be close. Everything seems to be in this season of play-offs.
Glasgow meet Munster in Belfast having looked down and out against an Ulster side looking for a home final, while Gloucester came back from the death in normal time and then repeated it in extra time to beat Connacht and claim a place in Sunday’s final shootout for the 20th and last place in next season’s Champions Cup.
And then there was Wednesday. On a clearer-headed morning after the night before I might have sat down and worked out just what percentage of the season Bristol spent at the top of the Championship. They beat us twice in the regular season (each time by one score) and then we were better at Ashton Gate in the first leg of the play‑off final but probably didn’t get what we deserved.
We went into Wednesday’s game one point in hand and looked to have things in some kind of control – at least on the scoreboard – at half-time, only for Bristol to run in three rapid tries. Bristol were the better side on the day and with five minutes of the tie (and the season) left were 13 points up.
At full time the aggregate was 59-58. Thrilling? Of course. Dramatic? Certainly. It may also make a few extra bob but it does nothing to help develop a side because here we are at the end of May before our plans can be nailed down.
And isn’t it unfair that sides such as Northampton and Bristol get nothing for their efforts? I don’t have the answer, but rugby league’s Super League does. They consider the league and the play-offs to be separate competitions and, in the Premiership at least, surely that is worth considering? The side which wins the marathon slog that starts in September and ends in May, going through the hard grounds of late summer, the bogs of winter and back into the firm stuff in the spring, sharing the spoils with the guys who win the sprint to the play-off line.
This isn’t this season’s winner simply being magnanimous – when it comes to play-offs, I’ve got history. I was with Bristol – they gave me my first chance as a director of rugby, so there’s an emotional tie – for the first Premiership play-offs. The top eight played each other and Gloucester beat us in the final but went away empty-handed because that season it counted for nothing other than pride.
The following season I was with Nigel Melville at Gloucester when we ended the regular season top, 15 points ahead of Wasps, only to lose 39-3 at Twickenham in the first play-off final. We were seething. Having come top we went straight through to the final and we’d been twiddling our thumbs for three weeks while Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards had their team playing and match-hardened after their semi‑final victory over Northampton.
The injustice of it all. Top by a mile, but with nothing to show, while Wasps showed they had worked out how to play the new end-of-season format.
Gloucester also got thumped in 2007, going down 44-16 to Leicester, but it was the season after that – against the same opposition – that really hurt.
It was during that brief period when the Argentinian coach Marcelo Loffreda was in charge at Welford Road. The semi-final was at Kingsholm and we were nine points up in the 63rd minute when Iain Balshaw, capturing the spirit of the moment, ran from behind his own line and threw a pass against his own post, allowing Aaron Mauger to score. Add that to a butchered try attempt at the other end and we were pretty suicidal even before Andy Goode’s drop kick from 40 metres gave Leicester a one-point win.
Wednesday was the other side of the coin and Andy Robinson, Bristol’s director of rugby, got it just about right when asked about the cruelty of it all: “It is what it is and you have to handle it.”