IT IS EASY to mock the PRO14, given how it has changed its name more often than Billy the Kid. Remember when it was just the plain-old Celtic League? Or when it reinvented itself as the Rabo Direct before the Magners League and PRO12 joined ‘work-ons’ and ‘learnings’ in the rugby lexicon?
Well, this evening a new season of PRO14 rugby begins …. albeit with just 12 teams.
That could change after Christmas, depending on the situation with green lists and travel restrictions in and out of South Africa where the Southern Kings and Cheetahs are based. Then again, there is the possibility it may just go to 13, due to the fact the Kings are in administration. In any case, it has been a while since we last had a rebrand and sure enough, we should get another one at some point in 2021 with the launch of the all-singing, all-dancing PRO16.
That particular idea – to facilitate the arrival of South Africa’s leading four franchises from Super Rugby, the Bulls, Sharks, Lions and Stormers, has already had a mixed response. Some, such as Keith Wood, think it is a bad idea; others, including Gordon D’Arcy, consider it a terrible one.
Yet what are the alternatives? Way back in January 2016, the late Munster chief executive, Garrett Fitzgerald, was talking up the possibility of a British and Irish League, something we’ve heard on and off for the guts of 20 years. It still hasn’t happened and at this stage you have to doubt if it ever will.
That leaves one show in town, unless you want to leap into a time machine and go back to the first years of this century when Ireland’s four teams were rationed to inter-pros and the All-Ireland league, leaving Munster to scramble around for a meaningful friendly just before the knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup got under way.
Well they won’t have that worry anymore. The arrival of the Sharks, Bulls, Stormers and Lions will certainly add meaning to a competition that was threatening to become the rugby equivalent of the GAA’s Leinster football championship.
The trouble with that little analogy is that the Dublin Gaelic footballers have had little trouble recently in transforming provincial dominance into All-Ireland title wins whereas Leinster have gradually gone backwards in the Champions Cup, from winning it in 2018, to losing last year’s final and then going down in this year’s quarter-finals.
Accordingly, the much-maligned PRO14 got the blame for Leinster’s narrow defeat to Saracens. Maybe that was the case. Maybe the testing centre in their domestic league wasn’t rigorous enough to prepare Leinster for the questions Saracens would ask. Or maybe Johnny Sexton and Cian Healy aren’t as good as they used to be. And perhaps Andrew Porter isn’t as good as he may yet become.
Quite possibly it was Leo Cullen and Stuart Lancaster’s fault for picking the wrong team or failing to impose their game-plan on Saracens. Or, horror of horrors, maybe too many people have over-analysed one particular result. “Look, when you come up against the best teams, you have to make sure you get a lot right on the day,” said Cullen yesterday. “And if we are being very truthful here, then the fact is that we didn’t do that against a Saracens side who had a number of players who featured in the World Cup final.”
A spin doctor would have advised Cullen to keep quiet, not admit his mistakes and allow someone, or something else to take the blame for that harrowing defeat. Yet he was better off saying it like it is.
The PRO14 is certainly flawed and some of the teams in it do nothing for the competition’s image. You only have to look at the contribution of the Kings – four wins from 55 matches, with a points differential of minus 901 in their three seasons – to realise the league does not have serious depth. Yet being a PRO14 team didn’t do Leinster any harm in 2018 or even last year as they navigated their way to a European final.
Nor has it proven to be inadequate preparation for Ulster or Munster’s European campaigns. The two Irish provinces have each reached the knock-out stages of the Champions Cup on six occasions in the last 10 years – a record bettered just by Leinster, Saracens and Toulon.
History, however, is written by the winners not the beaten quarter-finalists – so when Leinster come up shy against Sarries, and when Ulster got a pummelling in Toulouse 24 hours later – questions, rightly, were asked.
It shouldn’t just be Irish clubs who are answering them, though, because for some time Welsh players have impersonated Superman when they wear a red shirt and Clark Kent when they pull on their club jersey. Once the Ospreys were an ornament on the Pro14’s mantelpiece – last season they won just twice in the league.
“I’d be concerned about the Welsh clubs from the long-term aspect of this competition,” said Michael Swift, the former Connacht stalwart, earlier today. “Given their location, their proximity to Bristol, Bath, Gloucester, you can see why they would find those games a more attractive proposition.”
It’s a fair point. Yet the Premiership is a party they have not been invited to and you have to wonder if the request will ever come. After all, the biggest talking point around Premiership clubs in recent years has revolved around ringfencing the leading 13 clubs in England. So if they are prepared to turn their back on fellow English clubs, then what chance really do Welsh or Irish ones have of getting the VIP treatment?
The open door policy of the PRO14 has been way more accommodating for world rugby’s stragglers, housing Aironi, the Border Reivers and Celtic Warriors when they were looking for a base, long before anyone thought of the notion of bringing in a quartet of South African teams. “While I don’t know the exact specifics of it, the addition of those four teams really beefs up the competition,” said Cullen yesterday. “I mean you are talking about World Cup winning players coming into the league; that will raise the standard of all those teams playing in the PRO14.”
That’s for next year. For now, it is the Dragons who will be focusing Leinster minds, followed by games against Benetton and Zebre. Should they get off to three wins from three then it is highly unlikely to generate impromptu street parties in every village from Ballsbridge to Birr to mark the achievement.
Little wonder then the tournament planners are thinking of trying something new – although they could do everyone a favour by simplifying rather than complicating the structure of their new-look league. Here’s hoping.
