The playoffs are set
At the end of the 18-round season we are left with four contenders: Northampton, Bath, Exeter, and Leicester. After a lot of drama and speculation the top four is as it has been for most of this calendar year. Northampton and Bath have clung on to home semi-finals whilst Leicester and Exeter held off Bristol and Saracens. This leaves us with Northampton hosting Leicester on Friday night and Bath hosting Exeter on Saturday afternoon. Those are brilliant quarter-finals that hopefully won't be too overshadowed by the World Cup starting. Northampton versus Leicester is a direct clash with Canada's opening game which is against Bosnia.
End of an era in North London
Saturday afternoon brought the end of one of the greatest dynasty's in domestic rugby history when Exeter beat Saracens at Sandy Park. Mark McCall will be stepping away from his role as director of rugby at Saracens at the end of the season having seen his team his fall team fall short at the final, regular season hurdle. Saracens still have plenty of stars in their ranks, and will be good again next season, but that will be down to what McCall has built. He preferred to be in the background but his absence will be apparent next season.
Bristol's squad needs some re-structuring
The Bears were out of contention going into the final round which allowed for a very strange team selection. Pat Lam picked a match-day squad made up entirely of players who are England qualified. This was justified by the club, and Lam, as being necessary in order to meet EQP requirements. This raises questions around how the squad is built as a whole; surely Bristol should have enough starting calibre English players to meet these rules without having to essentially forfeit a game before its even started; everyone else manages to do it. The Bears are known to not spend as much as others in the league, and have a smaller squad as a result, but if they want to genuinely compete at the top they must invest more.
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