Jeff Probyn column: Play-offs should be used to assess tier two quality

The end of the season always spells triumph or disaster for one club or another and this year is no exception. As we close in on the annual moneymaking exercises that are cunningly disguised as ‘play-offs’, you have to wonder if it would not be better to allow the winner of the league to be given the title and save the play-off for those at the bottom?
The idea of the play-offs is to make the winner of the league ‘champions’ title fairer, as some teams lose players during the international windows. Therefore, a play-off of the top four clubs should give any team ‘disadvantaged’ by international player selection the chance to win the league title.
I say disadvantaged, but actually it should be the players that are performing the best at club level that are selected for the international squads, as Eddie Jones has constantly said.
At the moment, because of the RFU/ PRL agreement, players are picked on reputation rather than present form as they are picked for the Elite Player Squad before the start of the season.
Personally, I hope that the new agreement, with its highly inflated payment structure, will allow the England coach to pick players on form closer to the actual games, thus giving the team the best chance of success.
If selection were based on the best performing players, the majority would be taken from the clubs at the top of the league and, given the limited number of internationals, the effect of losing players should not impact on the club’s ability to win the league.
Saracens are a perfect example, dominating the Premiership all season despite losing more players to international squads than any other club.
Winning the league over 22 games should have crowned them as Premiership champions and enabled them to focus of winning an impressive double. Instead, they will have to split their efforts in the hope of becoming double winners of the European Cup and Premiership play-offs – and as a result could end up losing both.
The argument that it gives teams with EPS players a second chance to win the Premiership title also falls down because half the squad come from clubs that aren’t competing in the playoffs.
In my opinion if there is a need for a play-off system, it should be at the other end of the league allowing those at the top to concentrate their efforts on winning in Europe. Imagine if the play-off were confined to the club at the bottom of the Premiership against the top three of the Championship with all games played at the Championship clubs’ home grounds.
First it would provide a timely and welcome financial boost for the Championship clubs as they prepare for the extra cost that playing in the Premiership brings. Then, more importantly, we could see if they are capable of competing at Premiership level.
Any Championship team that harbours top-flight ambitions must, as Exeter proved, have the basis of a team capable of surviving that first year when promoted.
Games between Premiership team London Irish and the Championship’s Bristol, Doncaster and Yorkshire Carnegie would give a lifeline to London Irish while exposing the tier two squads to the standard of competition they would face, should they gain promotion.
If the Championship teams lost all the games, it would show they do not have a squad of players ready to make that step-up and need to improve.
Obviously there would be huge disappointment for the Championship clubs if they failed to get promotion but it would be preferable to a season of disheartening defeats and an immediate relegation to the Championship.
Under the format I am suggesting, it would also ensure that any successful Championship side that gained promotion would have a chance of another year’s survival in the Premiership should they finish at the bottom and win the play-off.
The huge variation in payments from the RFU between the Premiership and Championship are creating a de facto ring fence, making it important if not essential, for any team that gains promotion to have played and won against Premiership teams before making that step.
It was only while writing this article that I realised that in rugby there are no longer any games between the top teams and the rest of the game. We used to have a competition in rugby running along similar lines to the football FA Cup, where the giants of the soccer Premier League play against the minnows of the lower leagues – but in rugby that has sadly been consigned to history.
This is a shame, as by removing the link of an annual group of games between all clubs you create a division, a division that has given the Premiership the view that they are somehow more special and important than all the other clubs.
This is not the case, but I believe the present system is down to the short- sightedness of some of the members of the RFU national playing committee when the game turned professional.
At the that time I was a member of the RFU national playing committee. I suggested that the Union immediately signed the players to central contracts and was told that the Union didn’t have the money. I said if the Union didn’t, some clubs would and the game as a whole would end up paying a bigger price. Sadly, I was right.