Champ as a prem training ground?

[Cheshire Exile]

It's when clubs with large numbers of DRs bring in better quality loanees for relegation battles that it becomes infuriating. Having been on the receiving end of such behaviour (from LS, Ampthill &, a few years back Hartpury who put 13DRs from Bristol. Glos and Worcester in the game that put Richmond down), I would concentrate on stopping obvious abuse. For instance, last season Ampthill (who we beat at the Athletic Ground) had Caluori and Jack Bracken in their team for the return match at a crucial part of the season where we might have been able to overtake them at the bottom. Bracken had played for Ampthill once in the season before then and Caluori not at all. A guy who is a fringe international does not need game time. His appearance was there to make sure Ampthill did not lose and be in danger of relegation. Because they would be no use to Saracens if they were in Nat 1. That is surely not the point of the DR system.


Your comments about Caluori are not quite correct.
He played against the Pirates in the second round of matches last season, scoring two tries. A week later he scored five tries for Saracens in the Premiership. He was then called up by Borthwick for the England squad.
It is of course a nonsense that he could play in the Championship last season at all.

[jblee]

I think they should bring back the Monday night A league for Prem reserves.

The Champ has the potential to be a great league in it's own right, like Pro D2, not a training ground. There's only 10 teams in the Prem, there is some very good players in it and deserves to be treated as such, imo.

If the A league was brought back, Prem clubs would operate larger squads and hoover up more players in this league, diluting the quality. If the A league started up again the Champ would get worse imo.

They can’t afford the squads they have now, so I can’t realistically see A leagues being restarted.

Then again not having the money doesn't stop Premiership clubs spending it (and going bust and then being parachuted straight into the Championship once they have paid off a small proportion of their RFU approved creditors).

[Breakdown]

As a supporter of a Prem club I think the numbers should be limited to 4 or 5 season long loans. Allow for extra players to be drafted in to cover for injuries also perhaps. The players we loan out do best when they are at the same club for the whole season .

No thanks.
Maybe one or two season-long loans at a stretch.
No DRs, no other loans (except for genuine emergencies).
The Quins/Sarries type models are just taking the pish.
IMHO of course.

Problem is though there’s a lot of clubs (my own included) who don’t have a big enough squad without borrowing from elsewhere. Nottingham rely heavily on Trent University/Uni of Nottingham and the odd Leicester Tigers player. Last season for instance both our tighthead props got injured at the same time (one just temporarily on concussion protocol; the other is long term and indeed I’m not entirely sure if he’s actually going to be fit for this season) We ended up borrowing from the university system to cover. Granted I’m fairly sure that would be classed as a genuine emergency and that loan would be our only option in that case, especially in a front row position.

Unless of course you are Ealing Trailfinders and have a bottomless pit of money, the funding simply isn’t there to run gigantic squads and have sufficient cover in every position for the vast majority of teams. So while in theory your opinion is not bad, in practice it likely wouldn’t work.

Or unless you are Richmond and have 100+ senior men players of whom 40-50 are capable of giving T2 level rugby a shot.

[Breakdown]

It's when clubs with large numbers of DRs bring in better quality loanees for relegation battles that it becomes infuriating. Having been on the receiving end of such behaviour (from LS, Ampthill &, a few years back Hartpury who put 13DRs from Bristol. Glos and Worcester in the game that put Richmond down), I would concentrate on stopping obvious abuse. For instance, last season Ampthill (who we beat at the Athletic Ground) had Caluori and Jack Bracken in their team for the return match at a crucial part of the season where we might have been able to overtake them at the bottom. Bracken had played for Ampthill once in the season before then and Caluori not at all. A guy who is a fringe international does not need game time. His appearance was there to make sure Ampthill did not lose and be in danger of relegation. Because they would be no use to Saracens if they were in Nat 1. That is surely not the point of the DR system.


Your comments about Caluori are not quite correct.
He played against the Pirates in the second round of matches last season, scoring two tries. A week later he scored five tries for Saracens in the Premiership. He was then called up by Borthwick for the England squad.
It is of course a nonsense that he could play in the Championship last season at all.

Apologies, you are right -it was Bracken who hadn't played for Ampthill before. He played the last three games in 25-26, the first of which was against Richmond.

[Breakdown]

Just as a follow-up to this: Richmond played an Ampthill side with 4 Saracens and 2 Bath DRs in their side (3 in XV, 3 on bench) on Sept 19. Richmond had no DRs.

Ampthill were 40-21 behind with 20 mins to go and fought back brilliantly (partly thanks to a very poor floaty miss-pass that was intercepted) to win with last play of the game 40-42. Great match.

DR players scored 25 of those Mob points including 16 of the last 21 points.

Just as another point of comparison between the two clubs, Richmond Vikings (2nd XV) beat an Ampthill 2nd XV (called a Development Team) 90-7 on the adjacent pitch. Ampthill had a Bath DR in that line-up as well.

[jblee]

Just as a follow-up to this: Richmond played an Ampthill side with 4 Saracens and 2 Bath DRs in their side (3 in XV, 3 on bench) on Sept 19. Richmond had no DRs.

Ampthill were 40-21 behind with 20 mins to go and fought back brilliantly (partly thanks to a very poor floaty miss-pass that was intercepted) to win with last play of the game 40-42. Great match.

DR players scored 25 of those Mob points including 16 of the last 21 points.

Just as another point of comparison between the two clubs, Richmond Vikings (2nd XV) beat an Ampthill 2nd XV (called a Development Team) 90-7 on the adjacent pitch. Ampthill had a Bath DR in that line-up as well.

Nice to hear Ampthill are reducing their DRs this season!

[Rothoik]

There should be some limit on the number of DRs that reflects the fact that highly drilled prem reserves can easily mitigate any reduced cohesivenss simply by being fitter, quicker, more powerful and having better honed handling and aerial skills. This means that the recipient coaching team can simply parachute them in and they will more than make up for any lack in familiarity with game plans etc. It does skew results and artificially inflates the aggregate team quality. The overall team performance is then not a reflection of the team's own coaching and normal player resource. Roth had their heaviest defeat agains Dings last season and they had 7 loan players in the team. We were 19-0 in as many minutes. Dings scraped survival in NAT one having been thrashed by teams that Roth had thrashed. That result could have put us in the play-offs rather than automatic promotion in what was a tight finish between Plymouth, Blackheath and Roth (with Sale FC coming up on the inside). It's a tricky subject as I am also aware of the need for young players to get competitive game time but I thought the reserve leagues were really there for that purpose (along with cup matches).