No sport ushers in the new year free from the worries the pandemic brings but rugby union, perhaps more than most, looks to 2022 with trepidation. The Premiership carries on Saturday with bumper crowds, as was the case for the festive fixtures, but behind the scenes and with the Six Nations looming, key talks are scheduled in the coming days.
The government has not yet seen fit to introduce crowd restrictions to sporting events in England – Premiership clubs are likely to lobby for a pause to the season if it does – but that fate has already befallen Scotland and Wales. The Dragons chairman, David Buttress, has described the move as “devastating” and Wales’s first minister, Mark Drakeford, recently admitted he could not say if the restrictions would be lifted by the time of Wales’s first Six Nations home match next month. In Scotland – who host England on the first weekend of the Six Nations – restrictions have been imposed for at least three weeks and a formal review is scheduled for 11 January. Before that, however, it is understood a key meeting is scheduled for next week when organisers are expected to learn whether contingency plans will need to be activated and Covid protocols tightened.
Add in the current plight of the two European competitions – recently postponed fixtures have to be shoehorned into a cluttered calendar while the French government’s rules on travel from the UK threaten the next rounds of fixtures in January – and the situation is all the more precarious. The French government’s insistence that all sportspeople be fully vaccinated by mid-January is just another headache that European officials and Six Nations organisers are grappling with as the new year dawns.
Granted, adapting to the challenges posed to cross-border competitions is not an issue limited to rugby union but unlike the Champions League, club rugby is not awash with money. As Bristol’s director of rugby, Pat Lam, recently pointed out, even the cost of chartering a plane only to find the European fixture has been cancelled hits rugby clubs hard. The same goes for cancelling matches – for gate receipts rather than lucrative sponsorship or prize money are the lifeblood – and Bristol forewent around £300,000 after their fixture against the Scarlets was scrapped. That Sale’s Boxing Day trip to Newcastle was called off on Christmas Day only highlights how the Premiership is not immune, as do the 55 positive cases – the second highest on record – produced this week.
The optimistic view is that the bullet will be dodged, that crowd restrictions will not be required in England, that they will be lifted soon enough in Scotland and Wales, that teams competing in France will be granted the necessary exemptions and that the Six Nations can go ahead with full crowds. For the unions, the financial impact of having to play the tournament behind closed doors or with strict limits on attendance does not bear thinking about. For supporters and indeed, players it is a similarly desperate prospect.
“It would be a huge, huge step backwards if there are no crowds moving forwards for clubs and the Six Nations which is obviously such a showpiece event,” says the Northampton and Wales fly-half Dan Biggar, who last week ran out in front of more than 70,000 fans at Twickenham during Harlequins’ annual Big Game. “You saw it in the autumn, getting crowds back. Everyone coming to games now has to have a passport, they’ll be double or triple-jabbed, and it’s an outdoor event so I don’t see why they wouldn’t be allowed in. As long as it’s safe, that’s the most important thing.
“I hope for an event like the Six Nations and for the game up and down the UK moving forward we get some sort of sensible outcome. As long as everyone is safe and jabbed then I think it makes sense to keep crowds in. I think you would have seen a different game [against Harlequins] if the stadium would have been completely empty.
“We played a lot of games with no crowds but if you look at the first handful of games they almost felt like training games. It felt like it did not really matter whether you won or lost because it felt like a training match and like the intensity was knocked out of it. You lose any advantage of playing at home and bits and pieces like that.
“I think it would be a huge step backwards if crowds were to go. I think the rest of the lads in Wales are pretty frustrated with it. That’s normal frustration isn’t it? We are probably getting into different things with politics now but I think everything should be aligned.”
If the new year is also a time to reflect as well as look forward then listen to Biggar and you cannot help but wonder what might have happened had full crowds been allowed for the British & Irish Lions series against South Africa. Rugby union was not without its jaw-dropping moments in 2021 – Harlequins’ Premiership victory is testament to that – but the Lions was supposed to be the showpiece and it barely registers a footnote in any sporting reviews of the year. It has also sparked fierce debate about the quality of the product on the pitch, but Biggar sees a sport moving in the right direction.
“With the Lions, if we’d have won the series there might have been some [negative] column inches written still but we would have been celebrating a massive success,” adds Biggar, who lines up for Northampton at Saracens. “One penalty decision either way and there’s a very different slant on it. You look at the way the international game is, defences are a lot tighter, the preparation time you get is always difficult to compare with the club game.
“If you look at the way we [Saints] try and play it’s very positive, like Quins. We’re always trying to be positive with the ball. It’s having a balance. There are lots of high scores in the Premiership at the minute, and that’s the way the game is going – you’re going to have to score a lot of points to win, especially in this league.
“Gone are the days of accumulating three, six, nine points and then edge a game that way. Week in, week out you are playing against the best players in the world in front of sell-out crowds.” Biggar is not alone in hoping that remains the case in the coming weeks and months.