Next season’s Premiership will take an eight-week break to avoid clashing with the 2024 Six Nations, ensuring England players are available for significantly more of their clubs’ fixtures.
With Worcester, Wasps and London Irish all going to the wall last season, the forthcoming campaign sees only 10 teams take part in the top flight, competing over 18 rounds as well as the playoffs. Beginning on 13 October, the Premiership starts on the same weekend as the World Cup quarter-finals and concludes on 8 June.
While the opening three rounds of the Premiership clash with the knockout stages of the World Cup it remains to be seen how far England progress and therefore how many matches internationals will miss at the start of the campaign. Significantly, however, the league pauses after round 12 in late January, picking up again at the end of March. Though England players will be in camp for round 12, clubs will see far more of their international stars across the season – even with necessary rest periods factored in on the back of the World Cup.
As revealed by the Guardian, frontline England players started less than 40% of their club’s regular season Premiership matches last term. Across the board last term, the 44 players who appeared in an England matchday squad started less than 50% of league games on average, demonstrating why Premiership clubs have concluded that there is questionable value in having multiple internationals in their squads when they are available for so little of the season and when the financial compensation diminishes the more Test players they have.
Clashes with international windows have long been a source of frustration for clubs but they were exacerbated last season because the Premiership final was moved forward to accommodate England’s World Cup preparations. Last season there were five direct clashes between Premiership and England fixtures – it would have been seven had the fixture list not been redrawn after the demises of Worcester and Wasps.
The hope is that fewer club and country clashes will help keep England players in the Premiership and drive ticket sales, offsetting the loss of gate receipts for clubs who have only nine regular-season home matches. Each of the 10 sides are guaranteed a home match in the opening two weeks of the season as well as over the Christmas period in an effort to boost the coffers while round six in mid-November has been heralded as Derby Weekend with Sale hosting Newcastle, Bath entertaining Bristol, Leicester welcoming Northampton, Harlequins facing Saracens and Exeter locking horns with Gloucester.
The season begins with Bristol hosting Leicester at Ashton Gate on Friday 13 October while the defending champions, Saracens, start their campaign at Exeter the following day. Matches will be broadcast on the revamped TNT Sports channel with seven fixtures as well as the final to be shown free-to-air on ITV.
The 12-team Championship begins on 21 October and there will be a two-legged promotion-relegation playoff between the team who finishes top and the Premiership’s bottom club on the weekends of 31 May-2 June and 7-9 June, if the second-tier side meets the minimum standards criteria to join the top flight.
The Premiership Rugby chief executive, Simon Massie-Taylor, said: “Today is always an exciting day in the sporting calendar and I know that our dedicated Gallagher Premiership Rugby fans, players and clubs are counting down until the big kick-off. It’s great to welcome our new-look broadcast partner TNT Sports in their debut season under their new brand.
“And we look forward to delivering unmissable world-class sporting entertainment together, following such a closely-fought league last season, which included a record-breaking seven tries per game average. I’m also delighted that for the first time in our history we are announcing our TNT Sports games until January – allowing clubs and fans to plan the season ahead.”
