A weekly look at the game's other talking points
Eddie Jones is very publicly giving George Ford the cold shoulder at present and if that situation continues there is a decent chance that the Leicester fly-half could rewrite the Premiership points scoring charts, especially as there will be four more regular season games during this campaign than in recent seasons.
Almost by definition the leading points scorer in any given season will be not be involved in Test rugby, which makes them unavailable for their clubs for the best part of three months every domestic season if you include camps and stand down periods, so that alone would put Ford on course for a possible record breaking haul.
To date he has amassed 118 points in Tigers' first nine games at an average of just over 13 points a game. Theoretically there are 17 regular season games left and potentially two play-off games so if that trend continues a record haul of over 350 points is certainly possible.
Mitigating against that is the obvious caveat of possible injury plus Tigers could well qualify for the play-offs so easily that they can rest key players towards the back end of the regular season. And finally, if Marcus Smiths gets injured and/or Owen Farrell's return from injury takes longer than expected Jones would surely not continue to ignore Ford. Would he?
Examination of the sharpshooters list – based on individuals playing in 15 games or more per season – makes for interesting reading with, perhaps, some unexpected names to conjure with given the goalkickers of world repute that have adorned the Premiership over the decades, yet don't feature.
Top of the pile in every respect is the pride of Nenagh County Tipperary, namely Barry Everitt, who scored an all-time high of 343 points in 2001-02 for London Irish and, possibly more telling, scored them at a whopping 16.33 points per game. That's a prodigious effort in a team that, although finishing fourth in the table, won only 11 games all season. Everitt incidentally is now the headmaster at Cranmore School in Surrey.
Next on the total aggregate list comes John Schuster. Now that might well come as a surprise to many who only vaguely remember the name. Schuster is a player who would be in big demand these days, a Samoan fly-half who played in ten Tests for the All Blacks between 1987-89 but who then turned to Rugby League along with the likes of John Gallagher, Matthew Ridge and Frano Boticia before returning for a final stint in Union with Samoa and Quins. Schuster, unfussy and ultra reliable, helped himself to 331 points in the 26-game 1998-99 season when Quins finished fourth behind champions Leicester.
And in third place when it comes to sheer weight of points comes another London Irishman – via Wellington, New Zealand – namely the late Jarrod Cunnigham who piled up 324 points in the 1999-2000 season. Cunningham alas was to succumb a few years later to Motor Neuron disease.
As for points per game, the podium alongside Barrit is perhaps not what you might expect. In the runners-up spot comes Kenny Logan, who only really concentrated on his goal-kicking later in his career at Wasps and was first choice goal kicker there for only two seasons with Alex King sharing and then taking over duties.
Nonetheless the Scotland wing chipped in with 282 points at 15.66 per game in 2000-01 although that does also include ten tries.
And in third comes Charlie Hodgson, definitely a name you would expect on such a chart. Hodgson weighed in with 248 at 15.50 per game in Sale's championship-winning season of 2005-06.
As for the most consistent performer season on season, that is headed by Andy Goode who topped the total aggregate chart on four occasions followed by Jimmy Gopperth on three. He could be joined by Ford on that mark this season. We will see.
