Saints kick off season with a Bath rematch

THE opening night of the new Premiership campaign in September will reflect the highs and low of last season which was the most closely fought yet and will take some emulating, never mind trumping.

The two sides who fittingly took June’s final at Twickenham to the wire, Northampton and Bath, will meet at The Rec on what will be a frenzied Friday night in front of a highly likely capacity crowd for whom revenge will be on the menu after the Saints held on to take their second Premiership crown.

A few hundred miles north, Newcastle will welcome Bristol as they strive for a first league victory in what will be 18 months. It was in March last year that they defeated Gloucester at Kingston Park and since then they have lost 21 matches on the bounce.

Falcons have finished bottom of the table for the last two seasons, pipped by Bath in the one before, but their top flight status was never threatened with relegation suspended and then made highly improbable when only Doncaster met the strict entry criteria.

The club that finishes last this season is more likely to face the drop with the criteria set to be relaxed, although instead of straight up and down there would be a play-off between bottom and top. All the Premiership was lacking last season was jeopardy.

“You need a fear factor and relegation puts a different slant on things,” said Newcastle’s director of rugby Steve Diamond, right, who took over for the final six rounds of the Premiership last season. “Without the worry of going down you get dead rubber games.

Everyone will have something to play for and in the history of the Premiership, matches at the bottom of the table draw the same crowds as the ones at the top. If we find ourselves in the middle of a battle I know we will be well supported.”

Newcastle may have drawn a blank last season but they pushed Bath all the way at The Rec on the opening day before losing narrowly at home to Gloucester and Northampton. It does not need someone of Diamond’s experience to appreciate the need for a fast start and three of their first five matches are at home.

“We have not been clever for the last three or four years, bottom of the table for most of them,” said Diamond who has taken on the role of defence coach. “We have had to change quite a lot in terms of how we do things, such as preparation, eating and training. We have revamped everything.

“It was valuable to be here for three months last season and get to know everyone. The results were not pleasant but we drilled in a few basics and the lads came back this month fitter than they were this time last year. We are looking to deliver some results in the new season, building a resilience and mindset that will make us difficult to beat.”

Diamond has fortified his management team with the appointment on Friday of Alan Dickens, who spent four years in charge of England U20s and was at Leicester last season, as senior coach. “Alan’s extensive experience in both playing and coaching in the Premiership will be invaluable as we strive to compete at the highest level,” he said. Newcastle can draw inspiration from Bath who in two seasons moved from the bottom of the table to being within a play of winning the Premiership final, although there is a spending gap between the sides that means the Falcons are unable to sign the equivalents of Finn Russell and Thomas du Toit.

Money was not the issue when Bath were floundering at the wrong end of the table. If anything it was part of the problem and they recruited for the sake of it rather than identifying what, and more importantly who, they needed. That has changed in the two years Johann van Graan, left, has been in charge and their three new signings compare with 12 departures.

“The best is still to come,” said van Graan. “The players gave it everything in the final which came down to the last play after we went down to 14 men in the first half.

“I will be reflecting on where the game is and where it is going because high performance is about being fluid and changing when you need to.

“There will be expectation and that is brilliant because we want to compete in every tournament we play in. We had a magnificent season despite its disappointing end but now it is back to zero and making sure we improve our game bit by bit.

“The Rec has become a fortress and we want to become even better there. We were consistent away from home and we got points in every Premiership match except one. It is important everyone enjoys the journey and we are now a club players want to join.”

Northampton know they will go from chaser to quarry and in a table where six points separated first from fifth, every point matters and seven of their players will make a late start to pre-season after touring with England.

“We start the season like everyone else with zero points,” said Northampton’s director of rugby, Phil Dowson, below. “People will be chasing us down and we’ve got to make sure that we’re pushing ourselves and are as desperate as ever to get better. We know there’s a target on our backs, but we have confidence in the elements the different coaches are coaching and how we go about our business.”

Saracens have for most of the last 14 years started a campaign as favourites, but they are getting used to life without Owen Farrell and the Vunipola brothers, key components in their success over the years, while wings Sean Maitland and Alex Lewington have retired.

Picking a winner has rarely been as challenging. Bristol were the form team in the second half of the campaign, Harlequins reached the last four of the Champions Cup, Exeter‘s young side confounded the pundits and Sale rediscovered themselves after the Six Nations break.

Leicester and Gloucester have something to prove after finishing in the bottom three. There was only one change of head coach during the close season and it came at Welford Road where the experienced and successful Michael Cheika has replaced his Australian compatriot Dan McKellar who returned home after one season.

Cheika will only add to the competition and eyes will on on the lair of the Tigers in the fourth round next season, the first of two all derby weekends, when the champions pay a visit in the derby of all derbies.

Every match will be televised live for the first time and the television audience last season on TNT grew up eight per cent while the final was screened on ITV. The most popular round involved the derbies, which is why they now fill two weekends.

Harlequins will play two matches at Twickenham, against Leicester over Christmas and against Gloucester on May 10, the day when Cardiff will resound to West Country accents with Bristol taking on Bath at the Principality Stadium. Saracens take on Quins at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the second derby weekend, which follows the break for the Six Nations, and every club will have a home fixture in the open two rounds, the festive period and the final two rounds. “Five weeks is enough time in which to digest everything, get over it, understand it, enjoy it and then work out what we want to do next,” said Dow-son. “We are as desperate as ever to get better and will make sure all the new players get our DNA and what we are trying to do.”