The Principality Premiership season has kicked-off with a new format and some new coaches at the helm. Geraint Powell highlights the notable results from week one and assesses how the two conference system may pan out through the campaign.

 

The Principality Premiership returned at the bank holiday weekend, in an all-new east/west conference format with an earlier season start to accommodate more league matches.

In the east conference, defending champions Merthyr were forced to work hard for a 31-29 win over visitors Cross Keys.

Bedwas, under newly-promoted head coach Ian Gardner, secured their first ever win at Sardis Road with a 39-27 victory against a Pontypridd side rebuilding under new coach Justin Burnell.

Ebbw Vale enjoyed a 24-20 win at Bargoed and the Blue and Blacks of Cardiff, under newly-appointed (and long-time former Bedwas) coach Steve Law secured a 31-19 Sunday afternoon win over the Black and Ambers of Newport at Rodney Parade in the historic city clubs derby.

In the west conference, last season’s WRU Cup winners RGC went down 31-10 at Llandovery and last season’s beaten Premiership play-off finalists Aberavon secured an impressive 40-15 home win over Bridgend.

Neath defeated visitors Swansea 39-16 in the other Ospreylia region derby and Llanelli beat visitors Carmarthen Quins 24-8 in the Carmarthenshire derby match at Parc y Scarlets.

When I looked at the Premiership at the end of last season (http://www.dai-sport.com/hands-think-wru-premiership-working-anyone/), it was against a backdrop of much supporter dissatisfaction about the format of last season’s league.

As with any pyramidal model, the Premiership is heavily dependent upon both the tiers above it and the supporting tiers below underpinning it.

The difficulties for the Premiership since 2003 have mostly been caused by the problems above, particularly the issues that have left the Welsh regions without “A” teams until now and for the foreseeable future.  Yes there are now Premiership Selects, embryonic “A” teams if you like, but these are currently both struggling on the field and in a consumer/commercial vacuum.

This has left the Premiership fulfilling a multiplicity of roles.  It is a key tool in the regional academy player development pathway, a “bridge the gap” mechanism for academy missed and late developing players, the “best of the rest” league below the full-time professional regional game, and the place where Welsh rugby’s historic major club tribalism should be channelled and preserved.

The major complaints of club fans last season had been the shortage of league matches, for rugby is a fortnightly habit for many and one club notoriously had no home league match for about two-and-a-half months, as well as the absence of a traditional double round robin home and away league format.

The first complaint has been remedied, with a new format that increases the regular season league matches from 22 to 29 (and which also abolishes the play-offs), whilst additionally adding more local derby matches, but the latter problem of home and away league matches was always going to be more intractable with the WRU contributing nearly £1.5m exclusively for the player development role of the league.

A 16 team, 15 South Walian clubs and the North Wales development region, home and away league, with no promotion to the Pro14, with no battle to qualify for a limited number of places in the British and Irish Cup cross border competition, and with no relegation jeopardy, simply will not work as a heavily player development mechanism.  And there would be no time left in the calendar for play-offs, after a mammoth 30-match regular season.

The reality is that, after Christmas, there would be few clubs still competing for the title and the quality of so many dead rubber matches would in all probability be too variable.

So, if these are the various mischiefs, what is the proposed remedy in 2017-18 (and in 2018-19, where the same format will apply without further review)?

The 16 teams have been split into two east/west conferences of eight teams each, with RGC joining the west conference, where the teams will play each other home and away over 14 rounds.  Thereafter, all the teams will play each other either home or away over the next 15 rounds.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect, to keep the second half of the league season competitive at commencement, is the re-start upon the conferences merging.  Points will be carried across based on position, eight for winning a conference right down to one for coming last.

So a team, in theory, could lose all 14 conference matches without securing a single losing bonus point and will only be seven points behind an unbeaten conference winner who has won all 14 conference matches and each match with a bonus point for scoring four tries in a match.

The extreme scenario is 70 points versus 0 points becoming eight points versus one point upon the conferences merging, a gap of less than two wins without bonus points.

The first half of the season is all about getting your squad fine-tuned for the all-important second-half of the season.

But, as I have pointed out on my blog (https://thevietgwent.wordpress.com/), you will get ever increasing complexity to correct ever emerging problems if you don’t structurally start with good simple competition platforms and efficiently build from that.

In the longer term, for all the research/monitoring and increasing data collection as the pyramid is increasingly linked-up, these issues will only be resolved by what happens further up the pyramid.

If we move to a full representative regional rugby model, we are likely to eventually see under Option A the player development pathway burden be taken over by full regional “A” teams and a retained 16 team Premiership becoming more of a tribal battleground.

If we do not move to a full representative regional rugby model, we are likely to need under Option B the abolition of the Premiership Select teams and a much smaller and higher quality Premiership.

Option A is far more aligned to Welsh requirements than Option B, with a larger tribal Premiership competition, but options that are far more aligned to Welsh rugby needs have not always been chosen in the past.

As for this season’s Premiership, the east conference feels decidedly stronger and defending champions Merthyr again look the team to beat.  Their emphasis is very much upon winning the league, with only Harri Millard and Ben Jones allocated to them by their region’s academy.

But Merthyr are likely to be pushed all the way come the spring by the likes of Aberavon, Bedwas, Pontypridd, RGC and several others.

Whatever the ideal format for consumers, the 2017-18 (and 2018-19) consumer offering looks a significant improvement over 2016-17.