It's fair to say that the opening weekend of Premiership Rugby contained a spot of rust across the country but overall it was still great to have the competition back in our lives.
As a new feature this Premiership season I’ll be talking a look at some of the weekend’s talking points before we start to turn our attentions to the next round. If you spot some talking points during the weekend then do share them with me on Twitter @EmmaThurston23 because they might just feature in the round's round up!
As a new feature this Premiership season I’ll be talking a look at some of the weekend’s talking points before we start to turn our attentions to the next round. If you spot some talking points during the weekend then do share them with me on Twitter @EmmaThurston23 because they might just feature in the round's round up!
Positive debuts across the board
The opening rounds of a new Premiership season always afford us the chance to look at the new faces in action and it's safe to say that those newly arrived into the Premiership are going to add greatly to it. One of the positives from Kingsholm was the debut of Matt Scott while at Twickenham Stadium Alex Lozowski's first Premiership start for Saracens also turned heads. Lozowski's team mate Schalk Burger did what we expected him to do which is work himself into the ground and add plenty of physicality and there were glimpses of how effective Louis Picamoles will be at Franklin's Gardens. Bristol's Tusi Pisi made more metres than any fly-half has in the competition since 2014 and looked right at home in the competition while Ben Te'o, like Picamoles, showed us positive glimpses. Of course there are others that didn't managed to fly for example Taulupe Faletau sustaining an injury after 14 minutes was a great shame at Franklin's Gardens. But, overall those arriving delivered strong accounts of themselves in Round 1.
Bristol open with intent
I'll admit that prior to the start of the season I wondered whether Bristol would get to Twickenham Stadium and find themselves overpowered by a Harlequins side that were desperate to have a season to remember. The jump from the Championship to the Premiership is marked but over the course of the 80 minutes Andy Robinson's side showed themselves ready to handle the challenge. Physically they fronted up and if they had taken the victory there would have been few complaints from neutrals. Bristol's fans are passionate about their rugby and without a doubt the competition will be better for the club’s presence. Round 1 was a positive platform to launch from but the question that they'll need to answer is whether or not they can deliver that type of performance 12 or 13 rounds in when injuries hit? If they can then Andy Robinson's side should be just fine.
Forwards? Backwards? Forwards?
By now I think that you all know that I’m not one to go overboard when it comes to commenting or discussing about officiating. However there's one area that I feel that I need to include in this week's round reflections and that's the issue of the forward pass. It's a clear talking point from the opening weekend and one that didn't arise from just one match. The new stipulation when it comes to forward passes is to give the 'benefit of the doubt' to the attacking team but my concern with that is that it adds more, not less, subjectivity to decisions. In Round 1 there were a number of separate incidents that all could have been decided upon differently by different officials and that's my concern. Consistency is king when it comes to officiating and it will be interesting to see how this matter pans out over the coming weeks because I think that we'd all prefer not to be discussing this area and instead be focusing on the rugby at hand.
