WITHOUT wishing to be rude – damn it, let's be rude – last weekend's Exeter-Newcastle game was a joke. 74-3? Please.
There would have been more tension in a grassgrowing contest. Pampas versus Slender Creeping Red? Unmissable, comparatively speaking.
Far better was the Premier 15s final, a London derby between Harlequins and Saracens that was nothing short of captivating, not just by the standards of women's rugby but also in relation to pretty much anything that happened last weekend, anywhere in the Union game.
Time for a confession: during his Fleet Street days, your columnist was lamentably slow in recognising, and reacting to, the rapid improvements being made in this area of the sport.
A trip to Paris in 2014 proved transformative. Watching Maggie Alphonsi, Danielle Waterman, Emily Scarrett and the rest win the world title for England at the beautifully rebuilt Stade Jean Bouin was a revelation, so you won't be reading any antediluvian claptrap here about rugby being a “man's game”.
There cannot have been too many better individual showings in any cup final of recent years than that delivered by Shaunagh Brown, the Harlequins prop who drove her team towards victory with an all-court performance.
But there were also things to admire about Saracens in defeat, not least the timing of Zoe Harrison's passing at outside-half and the implacable scavenging of Marlie Packer on the flank.
“I challenge anyone to say women's rugby, or women, are not good enough, because we are,” Brown said, touchingly tearful in her moment of triumph. And she was correct.
Which is what you might have expected from someone who had just spent the afternoon getting everything so right, the reigning champions had no answer to her.
