Aviva Premiership Round 17: 5 things we learned

1. Gloucester vs Northampton at Kingsholm is one of the great fixtures

It was another epic between the Cherry and Whites and the Saints at Kingsholm on Saturday, in a fixture which has blessed us with some astonishing rugby in recent times. Last year it was George North’s brilliance that lit up the game, and this one began with another moment of magic from a Welshman, James Hook ducking and weaving his way through the Saints line before deftly grubbering through with the outside of his boot for Charlie Sharples to finish. Superb vision and the execution to match from the discarded Welsh fly-half. After another Welshman, Richard Hibbard, had rumbled over, Saints powered out of the half-time break with two quickfire scores from James Wilson, either side of a Dan Murphy score. It was a genuine belter of a game, and while the return fixture isn’t always a classic – Saints put 50 past Gloucester at Franklin’s Gardens in the opening round of this season – the games at Kingsholm recently have been nothing short of epic.

2. Daly peaks a year too late

How Stuart Lancaster must be wishing the World Cup was next year. This year, he has all of a sudden found himself with a host of young English centres tearing up the domestic league – think Hill/Slade at Exeter, Joseph at Bath, Stephenson at Northampton, Daly at Wasps. He has not had a chance to look at them all and rightly went with Jonathan Joseph for the Six Nations campaign. Sadly, though, there’s not really enough time left to have a look at any others, which is such a shame give then way Elliot Daly, in particular, is playing. His side may have lost against Saracens but his solo try was undoubtedly the moment of the weekend, weaving his way through the line and the trailing defenders to score without a hand being laid on him from 50 metres out. He has added a maturity to his game to go with that explosive speed and sidestep which has made him the form outside centre of the past few months.

3. Message received

After their mid-season blip, Exeter are firmly back on course to threaten the play-offs. They’ve put together a fine run of form, and while the arrival of London Welsh was never going to threaten it, to score 74 points shows just how confident they feel at the moment. Even after going two tries down, they kept playing their game and eventually galloped out of reach, scoring six unanswered second half tries, and ten in total. Exeter have set the blueprint for how promoted sides want to do things, which made their walloping of the most recently promoted side even more acute. Since securing Premiership status they have recruited infrequently but with great shrewdness, and used their big local catchment area to bring through some of the brightest young talents currently playing, most notably Henry Slade, Jack Nowell and Luke Cowan-Dickie. They are sitting pretty in second place and it would be a crying shame if they did not at least make the play-offs for the first time. And when you consider that the likes of Geoff Parling and, reportedly, François Hougaard are set to join next season, they are only going to go from strength to strength.

4. Northern resurgence

The improvements the Newcastle Falcons have made within the space of a season have been dramatic to say the least. They may have lost 12-16 to the Tigers at Kingston Park, in an affair that was more open than the scoreline suggests, but last season this was a game that the Falcons wouldn’t have threatened in. On Sunday they arguably deserved to beat the Tigers, playing with greater panache and accuracy, and indeed they went two tries to none ahead in the first half, their indiscipline the only reason the Tigers remained in the game via the boot of Freddie Burns. They were undone by a late, controversial try that on a different day might not have been given. Across the Pennines, Sale have been another of the season’s success stories, and while two losses in a row have taken the sheen off their play-off push, they are still outperforming many pundits’ (this one included) pre-season expectations. On top of that, Danny Cipriani cited the quality of the academy products at Sale as one of the key reasons for signing a new contract there. Rugby union is alive and well in the north.

5. Seven becomes six

Speaking of Sale, it’s difficult to see them re-mounting a play-off charge after they registered their second consecutive league loss, 3-12 away at Bath. It’s been a brilliant season for them by anyone’s standards, but they now sit down in seventh, eight points off Bath in the final play-off spot. Like the lowest hanging apple on a tree, they have been shaken loose of the top group of clubs, after they were all so tightly grouped barely two weeks ago. The teams above them are so tightly clustered that it is difficult to see enough of them dropping enough points for Sale to be back in with a shout. One thing that could work in their favour is the fixture list – of the five games they have left, only one opponent currently sits above them in the table; Exeter, whom they play on the final weekend. Even so, it would take a complete loss of form of two or three of the sides above them, which it is difficult to see happening right now.

By Jamie Hosie
Follow Jamie on Twitter: @jhosie43

Photo by: Patrick Khachfe / Onside Images