What’s New

Could this week POSSIBLY be moving any slower???

I am positively ITCHING to get to Donnybrook tomorrow night for Leinster’s pre-season warm-up match with the LettinOn Irish, so we can formally say once and for all the new season has begun.

Maybe I can kill more time by doing a blog post on what’s new for the coming campaign.

First, there’s the disappearance of most of the ELV’s, which is a good thing. My personal favourite was the banning of passing back into your own 22 to kick for touch and that has stayed on the statute books, so I for one am happy.

Also permission to collapse a maul has been denied again which must have every forward (particularly Paul O’Connell no doubt) rubbing their hands with glee. The rolling maul is back, folks…

To read the official text on all the new rules for the coming season, go here.

Now, to my biggest bugbear…the format of rugby’s various competitions.

I’ve said several times before I believe the structure of the European season is seriously up its own backside. One competition one week, another the next, then a big break for the Six Nations, the most important one of all, then back to the regional tournaments. It’s a model based on that of soccer, and as much as I also enjoy the “beautiful game”, it’s not so beautiful that the rugger heads need to copy it.

But who’s going to listen to dumb ol’ me on that subject? So instead, the Heineken Cup and Magners League have done a couple of tweaks, and given the circumstances, I’m in favour of both.

As happy as I obviously am about Leinster winning the Heineken Cup last May, the manner in which one must do so used to raise serious questions. Six pools of four, with the winners plus the “best two runners up” going through to the knockout phase. What this meant was that if a team lost their first two matches, they were effectively out of the competition, and would thus field weaker teams in their remaining pool matches to protect players for their domestic league.

This would give an unfair advantage to the teams who faced them in those later rounds. The ERC have attempted to close this loophole by awarding three extra second-placed slots from the HCup to the quarterfinals of the Challenge Cup, a tournament which gives you a place in the following year’s HCup, so definitely worth teams going for even if they lose their first two games.

Then there’s the new Magners League playoff method. I’ve seen rumblings of discontent about the ruggersphere regarding this, but personally, I’m all for it. Here’s how I worded my argument on Babbling Brook…

Maybe if the 18 ML games were played in 18 to 20-odd successive weeks, and not 35 as it stands, I'd prefer the league-only method, but with the way the Euro rugby calendar is structured, a top 4 playoff really is the only way to go to MAKE it fair IMHO.

Even two seasons ago when we won the competition proper there was a huge sense of anti-climax to the ML once the Six Nations was over. I used to call it the Meaningless League.

To have the Championship decider still to play for will only increase the profile of the league in the month of May. Besides, this increases the odds of yet another chance to beat The Munsters, and who wouldn't want that???

If I were to do a further tweak, I'd say the top 8 teams in the League qualify for the Heineken Cup regardless of country of origin. With two Italian clubs joining next season, it would surely mean that nobody could afford to "ignore" any round-robin games.

Now not all domestic format changes are to my liking. Take the way they’ve repackaged the second tier of England’s league and called it “The Championship”. Again I ask the question…WHY do they feel they have to imitate what soccer does????” Here is a good article on scrum.com outlining just how the new format works if you’re interested.

But what is the most significant new aspect to the upcoming campaign?

Why my vidcast, of course, which premieres this Saturday, all going well.

It’s going to be no longer than 10 minutes of a YouTube clip each week, with my opinion on Leinster or Ireland’s performance that weekend being the focal point, and a sketch or two here and there thrown in for good measure. See it as my way of taking things up a notch in an attempt to improve on what went right for Irish rugby last season, if that’s possible.

Again I say…BRING IT ON! STAT!!!