Time for change

[mol2]

Is the problem with England largely related to the Premiership's reliance/preference for foreign players?

I would make a case for any central/RFU funding dependent on the playing of England qualified player.

Suggest that for75% of matches the the following should apply to the match day 23:

3 of the 6 front row players must be England qualified.
For scrum half, fly half and No8 either your starting or bench player must be England qualified.
Exceptions should be considered for injuries in season.

Probably the same should apply to the Championship but to all positions.

Radical but necessary. The league relies on England and vice versa.

[wigworth]

Yes I would agree with this, I voiced it before in a previous thread about how the easy option for clubs is to just go get South African players to fill your most physical positions.

[kpj tiger]

Not sure on the validity but I remember somebody linking the dip in quality of the prem & england with the lack of top quality foreign players in the prem, the idea being that they pass on their skills to young English players

[Old Hob]

Yes I would agree with this, I voiced it before in a previous thread about how the easy option for clubs is to just go get South African players to fill your most physical positions.

I thought that, like the England cricket team Sale should be sponsored by Cinch - the car sale lot;
You know, 'Without the Faff".
I'll get me coat, and hat too.

[ABClub]

We've had this discussion a few times on the unoffy so I've copied and pasted a post from there last week on this subject. Apologies if anyone else is on both and reads this twice!

'Overseas players', 'squad players', 'journeyman', etc etc have been given many names aimed at maligning them down the years. They are absolutely vital to a good league though.

Snyman is the perfect example. His presence here meant that 3 young locks with higher ceilings in Chessum, Henderson and Martin had to improve and improve just to get game time. Chessum and Martin starting out at 6 as it's where they could get a shot. They had to prove they could offer enough in the lineout by trying to shine surrounded by more experienced, at that point better, lineout operators. They had to show they had the work rate and physicality for senior rugby. Once they proved that, repeatedly, they got a shot at lock. That's how you get players to improve.

Signings such as Snyman are rarely heralded and usually criticised or sneered at but without them you end up with academy grads getting game time by virtue of being fit and registered when injuries strike. Instead of being good enough. That's how you build a league with a propensity for lower quality games with nothing riding on them. A league where talented players stagnate. A league now known as The Gallagher Premiership.

So much focus with overseas players is on the ones that raise the top end quality of the league. Players such as Piutau that can bring the ceiling up on the very best games. The more important ones in reality are the players that raise the floor of the worst games. The ones who improve the bare minimum standards or non negotiables for academy grads to make a debut in the Premiership. The players who raise the standard of the worst players in the league rather than the best. Since ringfencing and the reduction in the cap, the standard of worst games has plummeted. The ability of the league to be used as good indicator of international quality in selection or it being a good tool to prepare the best talent for the jump up in standard to international level has evaporated with it.

The focus shouldn't be on England qualified players, rather England quality players.

A 10 team league, let alone a 12 team one, should provide ample opportunity for English players if they are good enough. Giving players chances simply because they are English enough, rather than good enough just makes the league worse. Which lowers the standards and culls development. As we are seeing in Premiership since ringfencing.

[wigworth]

Since ringfencing and the reduction in the cap, the standard of worst games has plummeted.

By what metrics or how is the standard of the game being judged? Is there supporting evidence for this or is it opinion?

I don't disagree with much of what you posted, nor do I want any sort of punitive restrictions on what players can play in the league. My biggest gripe is that the RFU don't seem to have a proactive approach at developing English talent in the league and making sure they have a pathway to play and develop.

[ABClub]

Since ringfencing and the reduction in the cap, the standard of worst games has plummeted.

By what metrics or how is the standard of the game being judged? Is there supporting evidence for this or is it opinion?

I don't disagree with much of what you posted, nor do I want any sort of punitive restrictions on what players can play in the league. My biggest gripe is that the RFU don't seem to have a proactive approach at developing English talent in the league and making sure they have a pathway to play and develop.

One thing I'd point to is the decline in defensive standards. Going back to when the Prem was stronger and English sides were competing in Europe better the worst defensive sides making the playoffs would concede just over 20 points a game on average. Now they are closer to 30 recently. In 15/16 Tigers had the most tries conceded at 48 in 22 games. Saints last season conceded 86 tries in 20 games. In 21/22 Saints again conceded 82 tries in 24 games.

I don't believe attacking play has improved massively. I think defence has declined. Which makes sense as it's a weak link aspect of rugby. As squad depth has gone down so too has the quality of those weakest links in the defence. 6 tries plays 7 tries can be highly entertaining but it's more often a indicator of poor quality defence rather than two sides who are so breath taking in attack they simply can't be stopped.

I also think that players shining in the Premiership so often then struggling at international level is reasonable evidence. Take number 8. Billy V and Dombrandt have looked strong in the Prem. Then dismal in international rugby. The gap in standard is an absolute chasm now. Dombrandt looks like a fantastically skilled and fast number 8 in the Prem. In international rugby he moves like a middle aged dad in wetsuit.

Premiership sides not competing nearly as well in Europe since ringfencing and the cap reduction is another obvious bit of evidence for the drop in standard.

I absolutely agree there should be a pathway to develop. But I strongly feel that should be in an A-league run like the French Espoirs with limits on playing numbers over 23-years-old. Then they should get to a strong and funded Championship. Only once they've done that development, then they should get to the Premiership. But only if they are good enough to supplant a more experienced and previously stronger option regardless of that players nationality.

[mol2]

Would the likes of Henderson, Chessum and Martin potentially have been better now if they had been given more Premiership experience rather than being kept out by Snyman?

But for the Kolpak agreement, how many of these players would qualify for a work permit?

Indeed why Henderson? Why is the English Premiership developing players for Scotland?

It's one thing having world class foreign players like Montoja and Wiese but that doesn't apply to Snyman and a host of others we have employed who are well below international standard.

English Premiership clubs should develop players who want to play for England.

[ABClub]

I don't believe they would be better, no. Because if you remove solid professionals and use academy grads who aren't as good yet just because they are English you dilute your competition. It lowers the standards so you end up with players getting more game time but not progressing. Getting 10 starts a season in a rubbish league won't progress a young player more than 4 bench apps in a strong league.

Which is what I believe has happened with the Premiership since ringfencing and the cap reducing. There are still high quality games but there are far too many rubbish ones. Teams rotating away from home, teams that realise they aren't making the playoffs but can't get relegated so just experiment with no risk to poor performance, teams having poor squad depth simply because it's cheap, etc.

The focus should be on quality. Snyman was the better lock when he was ahead of those three. They had higher ceilings but they weren't better than him yet. So Snyman improved Tigers and therefore improved the Premiership for that period. Even if was only fractionally. All those fractional improvements across clubs add up.

'Squad players' such as that who offer a stalking horse for young players to overtake are so important to development. Once the young trio were better they overtook him. At which point they improved Tigers and the league. That's how you get a strong competition. If we remove non-EQP players that aren't international standard the Premiership would be even more dismal. Half the squads would be players that should be in Championship. Be that young players who aren't ready yet or older players who are only there because they are EQP.

We don't need hundreds upon hundreds of England qualified players. We need a squad of England quality players. For that you need a quality domestic competition that forces academy talent to keep developing and improving. Quality, not quantity.

[mol2]

Can you develop quality without the quantity for the best to rise to the top.

Players don't get better just by watching. (Or I would be brilliant) they get better by training and playing against the best.

Too many potentially very good players are lost or simply miss the prime chance of getting better because they don't get game time.

Sport, at the top level should be a meritocracy but too much talent is held back for established players in English rugby.

Are Scottish and Welsh clubs developing young English players?

[ABClub]

Absolutely there should be pathways for academy grads to get game time. But it shouldn't be in the Premiership just because they are young and EQP. The Prem should be the reserve of best players for the present season. Development of players below that standard should happen in the Championship. In an ideal world in a Prem A-league as well with limits on numbers of over 23-year-olds.

Academy (U18)
A-league (U23s, a few late bloomers and injury returnees)
Championship
Premiership
Champions Cup
International

That could be the clear ladder of development for players if we had a decent system. With other inlets such as BUCS feeding in too, of course. Instead we have no A-league, a cut off and broken Championship, a weakened Premiership and English teams therefore not competing well in Europe.

Which leads to the only indicator for international selection being the Premiership. But the Prem has so many rubbish games now that it's basically guess work. The gap between the current Premiership and international rugby is simply too massive.

We need the Premiership to be the highest standard it possibly can be. Having only 5 of the starting tightheads across a 10 team league be EQP but scrummaging week in, week out against good opposition is better for development than having 10 EQP starting THs but them not developing well because the competition is too low a standard.

I'm strongly of the view that thinking of the Premiership as a development tool is part of the issue with England's structure at the moment. We need opportunity for academy grads to develop but the Premiership should be the top of that system. A high quality, cut throat league where every game matters. Where players have to already be good to get there and improve to stay. Not somewhere you get games based one where you were born as much as how good you currently are at rugby.

[tigerburnie]

You're missing a point here, you are presuming that rugby is still a game, it's not. For businesses to thrive and Leicester Tigers is a business it has to bring in revenue and that is born of success, how many soccer teams field teams with no English players on the pitch? Now it's all about the money.
At present there are 10 teams in the premiership, where do we find 10 top class players in each position? From our academies?
From other leagues? Where do these mythical English qualified players come from? What about replacements?
For the Premiership to be of the highest quality with 10 teams we cannot find enough EQ players. Scotland have two teams, some would argue Ireland only have 1.
So if we follow the Irish pattern we need to lose six teams from the Premiership, any volunteers?
There was a time when English clubs brought in a world class player after the World Cup, it put bums on seats, pretty sure Tigers did it, are you telling me you don't want to see another Pollard ever join Tigers again?
Shocking management put three clubs into administration, it wasn't non EQ players.
Shocking decisions by a self serving English RFU have made the National side an embarrassment, it wasn't non EQ players.
Dan Cole was pushed to the top by improving his game to over take Castro, would he have done it without that competition, well we will never know, but taking away the opportunity to learn from the best, like Ayerza, what does that achieve?

[ay2oh]

This situation lays entirely at the door of the RFU. They should have kept Eddie on until after the World Cup and appointed a new coach after that who could have started afresh with a new young group of players. Unfortunately they are only interested in money and have not got any long term plan.
Once the World Cup is over I’ve no doubt that Borthwick and co will introduce lots of new players but there will be lots of pain before the results turn around. France and Ireland didn’t become good teams overnight it was years in the planning.

[Wayne Richardson Fan Club]

Borthwick could have insisted of the ability to have an unlimited refresh when he took over he was in a position to do that & chose not to.
He could have picked whoever he wanted for the Summer & again went for experience.
He chose his own inexperienced coaching team.

There are issues with player production, player pathway & the structure of the game, but a lot of the England teams problems are self inflicted.

[trendylfj]

The bottom line of causation for me is that clubs want to be playing in the HC and do well in the prem. How do they do that - finish in the top 7/8. How do they achieve that? By having a stock of players who are just below being selected for AI and 6N for their countries. As long as so many club games are played during the "international window" clubs will always look for good players not likely to be involved. 6N takes an English-selected player out of action for 8/9 weeks during which there have been, in the past 5 or 6 prem games and don't get me started on the AI's. Used to be 3 games over 4 weeks and when Twicks was opening the N stand - one more game to celebrate the opening - special game!!!! No it wasn't, just a way of getting another England fixture into the schedule.

How many English-qualified 10s are the first choice for their clubs and not selected for the national team?

Yes, I would have a cap on how many non-English qualified players you can have in any matchday squad and get rid of the Kolpak agreement and with that, I would include the rest of the home counties if they are not English qualified as well either by residency or ancestry.

I will now retreat to my underground bunker - lol