Brendan Gallagher and the Championship play-offs

The Championship play-offs have attracted more than their fair share of criticism over the last four years which I find astounding given the quality rugby, cup-style excitement, bumper gates, tension and controversy they have produced.
We even ended up with eminent QCs enjoying – i.e. getting paid a packet – a high-powered legal dust-up in the committee rooms of Twickenham two years ago when London Welsh fought with such determination for their hard-earned Premiership status. What’s not to like?
OK it is ‘Russian Roulette Rugby’ which is why defeated coaches and owners sometimes cry foul if there is a bullet with their name on it but that is no different to the Aviva Premiership where there is a well-established tradition of the team topping the regular season failing to take the main prize.
The play-offs provide a fascinating mini-Cup competition with the added, unique, element of home and away ties. Is any other rugby union competition decided this way? Put all of the above in the mix and you get a fine advert for Championship rugby, a showpiece occasion that seemingly always takes the bigger rugby world by surprise. Come the end of May and early June, twitter lights up with rugby fans commenting that they did not realise there were so many good players in England‘s second tier professional league.
The play-offs were instigated for the end of the 2009-10 and after a torturous progression through the two mini-leagues it was regular season winners Bristol and Exeter, runners-up in the three of the previous five seasons, who contested a final with a decidedly West Country tinge.
Down at Sandy Park in the first leg we witnessed a text book demonstration as to how two-legged matches are a different kettle of fish altogether. Exeter might have been playing in front of a then home record crowd of 10,000 but Bristol were still strong favourites so coach Rob Baxter opted for a conservative ‘holding’ game rather than an adrenaline-fuelled dash for glory that could see the Chiefs‘ hopes dashed in a couple of reckless moments.
The result was a narrow 9-6 win which sages, to a man, declared would never be enough against a rampant ‘Bris’ in the return game at the Memorial Stadium.
Not so. The canny Baxter also placed seven cameras strategically around Sandy Park to provide a complete record of proceedings which he and Ali Hepher poured over in the subsequent 48 hours until they had the blueprint for victory in the return game. They cracked Bristol’s line-out code, identified all their backrow moves, noted that Bristol were surprisingly poor defending the rolling maul and spotted a possible weakness that could be exploited in the front row. Exeter had also been cleverly rotating their best players and always knew deep down that the major effort of the season would be needed in the last match of all.
The result was a stunning 29-10 win on the road in wet conditions with Gareth Steenson kicking 24 points and replacement hooker Simon Alcott barging his way over for a try as a shell-shocked Bristol came a distant second. Baxter did not miss a trick, his masterstroke being the decision to offer another year’s contract to everybody selected for the return leg a couple of days before their trip to Bristol.
Whatever happened the club believed in them and they would be gainfully employed the following season. Exeter were in a very good place mentally as they approached the biggest game in the club’s history.
That defeat hit Bristol very hard – they slumped to eighth in the league the following season when a star-studded Worcester side were the class of the field from start to finish. The Warriors lost just one regular season game, boasted a six out of six record in the mini-play-off league, accounted for London Welsh in the semi-finals and then held off a resurgent Cornish Pirates in the final.
The key, at the death, was a convincing 21-12 win over the Pirates at the Mennaye Field on a scorching evening, Miles Benjamin and Andy Goode scoring the tries and Goode kicking the remainder of the points. Pirates were a dangerous side given half a sniff but Worcester imposed a relentless stranglehold on the match and repeated the exercise for the first hour back at Sixways the following week when they raced into a 25-6 lead.
With everything under control Bristol visibly relaxed and Pirates hinted at what might have been with two late tries and although 46-32 up on aggregate it all started to get very tense for Worcester supporters. These play-offs play havoc with your nerves.
Pirates were right back in the thick of it 12 months later though when they set the latter stages alight with a stellar 45-24 win over Bristol in the first leg of their semi-final after Bristol had topped the table in the regular season although not totally convincingly. The suspicion persisted that they possessed a soft underbelly and so it proved down in Penzance despite getting off to a flying start with two early tries.
Pirates hit back memorably with five tries in what remains the best Championship team performance I have witnessed. Full-back Rob Cook scored 25 points and soon found himself on the way to Gloucester while hooker Dave Ward was snapped up by Harlequins.
Pirates survived the return game comfortably but it was not to be their year because London Welsh were on a mission, fighting on two fronts. On the rugby pitch their team was improving with every outing while off the pitch their high-powered legal team were waging war with Premiership Rugby and the RFU over a ruling that they would not be allowed to be promoted because they “failed” to meet the necessary ground criteria – despite having lined up the splendid Kassam Stadium in Oxford.
The Exiles made the best possible start to their campaign with a superbly crafted 37-21 win at Pirates, a victory that came just two hours after the RFU had ruled they could not be promoted and they finished the job with a nervy 29-20 win at the Kassam before, riding a wave of universal public support, they proceeded straight to a ‘third leg’ with their legal eagles forcing the RFU and Premiership rugby into a rare U turn.
The ‘little guys’ had won a rare victory.
Which brings us to last season and a hard-earned win for Newcastle, who scraped past Leeds Carnegie 34-30 on aggregate in their semi-final and then overcame an obdurate Bedford 49-33 in their two-legged final.
Dean Richards was not happy: “It’s as though we’ve been in purgatory, it may suit sides who have no ambitions of going up, but if you have everything in place then it doesn’t seem quite right.”
I strongly disagree.
The Premiership may have been out of order getting heavy over those ground criteria – they stood accused of having been hypocritical and self-serving over the years as to when and to whom that applied – but they are entirely correct in the general principle that promotion has to be hard-earned.
And it is.