It would be disastrous if a Premiership Rugby team was relegated this year just because they were fit and healthy.
There’s a serious risk of that happening now due to the fact that you get two Premiership points if you can’t play a fixture due to positive COVID-19 tests.
It means that a club who stays healthy with no positive test results can lose all the games they play and get zero points, compared to a club who gets a number of games cancelled due to the virus but still get points. How is that fair?
If common sense prevails then the Premiership should be ring-fenced for this season meaning that no team gets relegated or promoted from the Championship. This is the only way to ensure that teams aren’t punished for staying healthy.
ᴡᴇꜱᴛ-ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛʀʏ ᴅᴇʀʙʏ ᴡᴇᴇᴋ 🍒🐻
— Gloucester Rugby (@gloucesterrugby) February 8, 2021
See you on Friday, @BristolBears 👋 pic.twitter.com/TuH2qSMT4N
Take Gloucester as an example. They have played every game so far, having had no outbreaks of COVID-19 that have led to fixtures being cancelled. They are currently 12th in the league, behind teams like Northampton Saints who have had multiple games cancelled due to outbreaks of the virus and have been given two points meaning they sit 7th in the table.
Not only is this system unfair but also the clubs that have been playing aren’t getting the same amount of rest as the clubs who have fixtures chalked off due to COVID. If you’re playing each week, bodies get sore and injuries get picked up meaning that getting points in games becomes even harder.
Some teams have essentially had midseason siestas as their opposition have been unable to field a team due to positive COVID tests. Relegating a team this year would be as brutal as a fresh faced academy player having to tackle a rampaging Semi Radradra in their first professional game.
There are some big objections to this happening though. If you were a sponsor, you wouldn’t want half of the games to be meaningless. It’s exciting seeing a relegation battle. Eyes are drawn equally to the top of the league as they are the bottom and if those games no longer mean anything then people are going to turn off and go and bake some banana bread instead (or whatever the latest lockdown trend is!).
Relegation is a vital part of sport but this year it simply can’t go ahead. There are those who want to see the competition ring-fenced indefinitely and that’s not the answer as you lose that element of competition but this year, we don’t want a team to be relegated just because they stayed COVID free. Do we?
