Welcome back!

I am delighted to be able to wish a warm “welcome back” to English Premiership Rugby!

Hoorah!

When the 2019/20 season was so abruptly terminated back in March in the face of the pandemic there were still nine rounds to be played and it was by no means certain that the program would ever be completed.

Now here we are – in the dog days of the summer – watching (where that is possible) rugger again and with the prospect of a great deal more of it to come. The 2019/20 season is to be wrapped up by the end of October – at which point the 2020/21 season will start immediately. The remaining fixtures in the abandoned 2020 Six Nations Championship are also to be shoehorned in and there is talk of some additional autumn internationals – which all adds up to a mouth-watering prospect.

The games are – of course – being played in empty stadia, which does take some getting used to. When one watches TV coverage of any of the matches one is immediately aware of the presence of an artificial ‘stadium noise’ soundtrack. This is actually quite cleverly done – incorporating as it does peaks and troughs that go someway towards emulating an authentically live ambience. What I don’t know is if this soundtrack is added only to the TV coverage, or if the players can hear it in the stadia.

Anyway – when we left them back in March my team – Bath Rugby – were hovering in the exact middle of the Premiership table. They made a good start in the first game back last week – beating London Irish comfortably at The Rec for a bonus point win – and this week they went one better, trouncing old rivals Leicester away at Welford Road. Granted that is not the challenge that once it was, but it is nonetheless still no mean feat. Let us hope that this momentum can be maintained.

It is very good to see live rugby again; a return to at least some semblance of normality.