LONG READ Mick Cleary: 'This is the most significant season in Premiership history'

This is shaping up to be the most significant season in the history of the Premiership. And it hasn’t even started yet. This belated beginning is the consequence of one of the many blinkered, pompous, up-themselves decisions taken by the powers-that-be who argued the answer to the game’s economic woes would be a stab at summerish rugby.

They elected to push the season deep into June and restart later in September, after all the fanfare of other winter sports has been heard, not to mention a rival for attention across the Channel in the dramas of the Top 14. If this weekend’s opening salvo in the Premiership manages to come anywhere near matching the interest generated by the Top 14 openers, with acres of newsprint given over to Owen Farrell’s Racing 92 debut at Castres, then it will be doing very well indeed.

If it were just a matter of trusting the Premiership players to deliver then we could rest easy. Last season’s product on the field was tip-top for the most part with the massive caveat there was no relegation and Newcastle Falcons didn’t bother the scorer when it came to recording league victories.

There was an edgy race to the tape for the front-runners with the play-off teams not decided until the last couple of rounds. Northampton and Bath gave us a final worthy of its status so chapeaus all round in that regard. There was fluency in the general level of play, fierceness and snarl too, so we can have few complaints and must hope (big word that) for more of the same, please.

The money game is why we approach the new season not with a spring in our step as should be the case but with a furrowed brow.

Yet we know in our hearts that that won’t be enough for one simple reason – there aren’t enough teams on show each weekend. Factor in too promotion and relegation is either non-existent or, at best, some airy-fairy commitment to the concept.

Look at how much interest has been revved up – even here – by the arrival into the top-flight of Vannes, Brittany’s first rugby club to break through into the elite. Where is the Vannes of the English game? Ealing Trailfinders? Doncaster Knights? Rotherham? A titan emerging from Cornwall? We won’t know until promotion and relegation, even if only via an imbalanced format of a play-off, is enshrined into the governance of club rugby, allied to a more equitable distribution of monies and less rigmarole over stadium facilities. The Premiership has actually been ring-fenced of late and has long been seen as being so by those trying to break through with one financial arm tied behind their back.

The money game is why we approach the new season not with a spring in our step as should be the case but with a furrowed brow. It would be wonderful to be gung-ho at this stage, as was the case for many seasons, but it would be naïve to be so upbeat. Sadly. Regrettably.

For all the fanfare that greeted Allianz’s purported £100m renaming rights deal for Twickenham, that positivity has been swiftly usurped by news the RFU has embarked on a redundancy round of talks from which 42-45 people will lose their jobs. Likewise, Premiership Rugby itself is engaged in a restructuring process in a bid to cut costs and streamline the business.

There was also an alarming quote deep into a fascinating piece by The Guardian’s Sean Ingle. Ingle’s article focused on the heartening role sport plays in the TV market with some great figures returned across the summer by the Euros and the Olympics. Sport, it seems, can still exert a hold on the nation despite all the competing attractions of social media and the like. But there, mid-piece, came this paragraph based around the findings by highly regarded media analysts.

There is little prospect of a bolt-from-the-blue about-turn in fortunes but there has got to be some sign of an uptick.

“The losers? The Enders report points out rugby’s 2023 World Cup audiences fell a fifth on 2015 despite England doing well,” ran Ingle’s piece. And then this stinger.

“It (Enders) also warns ‘English club rugby is in an existentially unhealthy state.’“

There we are. Reality time. That’s why this season is so significant. There is little prospect of a bolt-from-the-blue about-turn in fortunes but there has got to be some sign of an uptick, something of a lessening of the gloom and uncertainty that is the current mood music.

The new Professional Game Partnership may be the trigger if it really does lead to more joined-up thinking between the RFU and the clubs. That would be a start with the onus on the union getting its act together to pool resources, to recognise players have to be shared, looked after but also projected and promoted and allowed to appear in front of loyal club supporters. Without the fans through club turnstiles every week, there is no professional rugby. International matches do, of course, bring in the booty, big-time, but those players need finding and nurturing in the first place.

Which clubs are going to engage (and occasionally enrage) us this season? At the risk of labouring the point, with only 10 teams on the starting grid it’s not difficult to figure who will be jostling for pole position and who will be bringing up the rear. Bath look best placed to go one further than they did last season and finally bring a celebratory smile to owner, Bruce Craig, who has spent a considerable amount of money trying to bring a league trophy back to the Rec. As ever, Finn Russell, will be key. His form we can take for granted, less so the vagaries of injury. If he stays fit, Bath are the front-runners.

Northampton Saints deserved their title, for the harmony of their side, the blend of Courtney Lawes-type grit and Mitchell-Smith-Freeman-Furbank-type dazzle allied to shrewd, empathetic coaching. Northampton are well set, too, but Lawes is no longer a Saint, along with a few others. They are contenders, though, for sure as are Sale Sharks, Exeter Chiefs and Harlequins. A slimmed-down Bristol Bears will also be competitive. Leicester Tigers under Michael Cheika, the Aussie Mr Fixit, the surprise appointment to once again restore one of England’s big names to the limelight? Cheika has been round the block and knows the trade. His presence will bring edge to proceedings, that’s for sure. Saracens are in transition and so much will rest on the ability of Crusaders’ import, Fergus Burke, to fill the rather large space left by Farrell.

Gloucester, dear old Gloucester, when will their time come again? Their long-suffering fans deserve better. And Newcastle? Steve Diamond loves a scrap. And he’s got one. The underdog, though, needs bite as well as a snarl.