Saracens produced a magnificent, 100-page programme for Saturday’s Premiership match against Harlequins at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but one of the printed features was a bit of a sham.
The “Five to Watch” listed from Quins were Alex Dombrandt, Danny Care, Marcus Smith, Chandler Cunningham-South and Fin Baxter, but only Dombrandt played, while Care was absent with a knee injury and Smith, Cunningham-South and Fin Baxter were rested as a condition of their participation for England in the Six Nations.
So while the match was billed as the “Showdown”, not all the Quins showed up, and England’s Alex Mitchell and Tommy Freeman were similarly excused from their club Northampton Saints’s Friday night meeting with Leicester Tigers, in a round of games promoted by the league and its broadcasters TNT Sports as “Derby Weekend – the Rematch” .
There was a frothy strapline: “Rivalries reignite. Scores must be settled. Pride is on the line” – to which those who paid good money to go to the matches might have added: “And a load of the top players were on holiday.”
Straight away, it must be said this isn’t a demand for players to play more often.
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There is common sense and welfare in mind in the rule that says a player must miss one match out of three in the period immediately after the Six Nations if he has had any involvement in all five matches.
The same applies in the autumn, and it even embraced Cunningham-South sitting on the bench for England against France without coming on, as that’s deemed to have taken a physical and mental toll.
Maro Itoje turned out at Tottenham, and Saracens and England captain has now started 21 matches this season, completing 80 minutes in the vast majority of them, which some might argue is enough for an entire campaign.
Itoje will take his week off when he either misses Saracens’ visit to Leicester Tigers next weekend, or to Toulon in the Champions Cup the following week, then resumes hurtling towards the end-of-season Lions tour, surely breaking through the 30-match barrier as he goes.
No, the point here is to ask whether rugby has trying to have its cake and eat it, and who is footing the bill?
Looking at Northampton, their bid to retain the Premiership title has been hampered by three matches lost while England players have been unavailable – two games clashed with England training camps, then came Friday’s embarrassing 33-0 home derby defeat without Mitchell and Freeman.
A straw poll among a few of the 54,414 people paying £50 or more for adult tickets at Tottenham the next day came back with disappointment over the absent Quins, as it did not fit the billing of the match and choice of stadium.
Check out the highlights from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as @Harlequins pulled out a comeback victory against @Saracens. pic.twitter.com/ZgBTxygmbS
— Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) March 22, 2025
There was no simple correlation between the result and the Test caps in the team, as Quins prevailed 23-12, which was a turnaround from when Smith did play in the fixture last year, and they lost 52-7.
They were steered to an excellent win after trailing 12-0 by academy product Jamie Benson, a 22-year-old Cambridge blue: a great story, and youngsters must have a way to break through.
But neither did it tally with those marketing the Premiership who are encouraging clubs to use these big matches to cut through to new audiences who currently only follow England and the Six Nations. They risk aggravating precisely the people they are chasing.
Quins head coach Danny Wilson can only work within the rules, and he said he had told Smith, Cunningham-South and Baxter before the Six Nations started in late January that they would miss this particular match, if they fulfilled the criterion for the week off.
So maybe there is an information piece here, to ensure ticket-buyers know the full terms of their purchase.
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Read MoreUltimately, it highlights yet again the push and pull between making a buck and looking after player welfare.
TNT relish the “Derby Weekend”, and they requested that it should happen twice a season – hence the reverse fixtures in rounds four and 12 of the Premiership – and for it to take place during the international football window, when they have no Premier League matches to show, so they can “fire all their guns on rugby”, as a Premiership source put it.
This in turn is a function of the fragmentation of the sports broadcast market.
Is there any way round it? It is understood the men’s Six Nations will cut one of the two “fallow” recovery weeks during their competition next year, but that will just be filled by matches on another date.
A blunter instrument would be a weekend free of all fixtures straight after an international window: a blanket time off so the likes of Smith, whose Instagram showed him enjoying the Florida sun last week, could recharge the batteries with no one else having to miss out.
But that would just leave clubs complaining even more loudly about the downtime they go through while the Tests are on.
As we have said in these pages many times before, until the entire rugby fixture list is slashed to a much more welfare-friendly level, these frustrating clashes will continue – and the closest the punters will get to some of the “ones to watch” will be on the pages of a programme.
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