Who'll join Wasps, Chiefs and Saracens in the Aviva Premiership Playoffs?

One spot is still to be decided in English top flight, while over in France nine teams are still in the running for three playoff places. James Harrington takes us through the tables as the regular season nears its end.

Three out of four sorted in Premiership

Bar a little late drama, the playoff picture in England is almost complete. Wasps, Exeter and Saracens are already planning a three-week season extension, while Leicester and Bath are neck-and-neck and clear of the chasing pack in the race for that final place.

Matt O’Connor, who started his short season at the Tigers by watching them give up an eight-point lead in 11 minutes against their run-in rivals on Saturday, has three matches to ensure his new side have a post-season shot that at one point looked well out of their reach.

Leicester’s run-in looks, on paper, marginally more straightforward than Bath’s, but both sides have several blots on their rugby landscape this season which makes their immediate futures – not to mention those of chasing duo Harlequins and Northampton Saints, who could yet spoil the party – difficult to see in the clouds within the crystal rugby ball.

One thing is certain. Whichever side does finish fourth faces a trip to one of three sides that have only lost at home twice between them all season. And those teams that have lost at home are not Wasps. Or Saracens.

Results relight Top 14’s fire…

Only advanced mathematics involving supercomputers at the CERN offices can stop La Rochelle from finishing the regular season at the head of the Top 14 table, but a bit further down things remain rather more undecided, even chaotic.

Clermont and Montpellier, too, have all but done enough to make sure of their places in the end-of-season playoffs, but nine teams are fighting it out for the remaining three playoff places.

That’s right. Nine. Into three. With three, or in some cases possibly four, matches remaining in the regular season. Toulouse, way down in 12th, are six points behind fifth-placed Pau and, therefore, not out of it. Bordeaux, in 11th, are just four points – that’s a simple win without any bonus points – outside the play-off zone.

The waters are muddied further by the fact that four teams in the running, Racing 92, Stade Francais, Montpellier, and Castres, may or may not have a game in hand, pending a court hearing. And they may or may not gain or lose points as a result of that court hearing. 

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… Except at Toulouse

Yes, admittedly, we said nine teams. In truth, it’s more like eight plus one. The Top 14 side least likely to finish in the top six is one of its biggest. Toulouse, a team that have never in their history failed to do what they are almost certainly about to fail to do.

It’s very unlikely, but it is still mathematically possible for them to be relegated. They would have to fail to score a single point in their remaining three games, while 13th-placed Grenoble would have to pick up three bonus-point wins to overtake them.

So far, unlike, say, Toulon’s Mourad Boudjellal, club president Rene Bouscatel has resisted the urge to show young coach Ugo Mola the door – but he did issue one of those dreaded votes of confidence in his manager two days before Toulouse went to Marseille and lost against Toulon.

But it’s an indication of how far the club’s star has fallen that, just five years after the most recent of their 19 French championships and seven years after their last European Cup triumph, they are contemplating relative humiliation this season, while the very real prospect of a season away from European club rugby’s top table is actually something they can barely afford.

No wonder Bouscatel was spotted sitting in the Toulouse dugout after the Toulon defeat looking like a wet weekend in Wigan.

Three into two in the Pro 12

Leinster and Munster have the top two Pro 12 spots almost but not quite completely sewn up in the race for the playoffs. With three matches remaining leaders Leinster are two points ahead of their rivals in red from the southwest, and nine points clear of third-placed Ospreys. Barring rugby disasters, then, it’s safe to say both Pro 12 semifinals will be in Ireland. But three teams – Ospreys, Scarlets and Ulster remain firmly in the race for the final two playoff spots.

Meanwhile, in the special Italian section of the Pro 12 – which you’ll find by looking at the bottom of the table – Zebre, for so long the basement club of the competition, stole a march on rivals Treviso by claiming their second victory in as many weeks. Their 29-14 win over Newport-Gwent Dragons was the first time they had won two Pro 12 games in a row since Christmas 2015, and moved them off the bottom and into the Italian Champions Cup spot.

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