Northampton this week announced a profit for the 12th consecutive year. The Saints made more than £800,000 on a turnover a shade over £12m, a figure that will increase if the latest development phase of Franklin's Gardens is given the go-ahead.
Home is not where the heartache is in the Premiership. Leicester are also profitable, as are Gloucester. The clubs who make big losses are those who do not own their own grounds: Saracens, although they are moving to their own place in Barnet in the new year, Wasps, London Irish and Bath, who cannot break free of the Charity Commission.
With Sale having primacy of tenure in Salford, Saracens moving out, Wasps, once the club's takeover is completed in the coming days, weeks or months, planning to move out of Wycombe and relocate along the M40 closer to London, Bath continuing to hope that the club will be able to buy the Recreation Ground and London Welsh pondering whether to make a bid for the Kassam Stadium if they stay up this season, the Premiership could in the not too distant future be inhabited exclusively by owner-occupiers.
Last season's top five was made up of four clubs who owned their own grounds, Harlequins, Leicester, Northampton and Exeter, with Saracens the exception, able to compete because their South African owners have been content to write off substantial losses, like Bruce Craig at Bath.
Mark McCafferty, the Premiership Rugby chief executive, made the point this month that the key to profitability for clubs was ground ownership. Stadia like Welford Road, Franklin's Gardens and Kingsholm, generate income every day, not just on a match day.
With the salary cap designed to ensure that the gap between rich and poor is not anti-competitive, the extra income enjoyed by ground owners is reflected less in wages than facilities, but as seasons elapse so the cap is sure to rise to reflect the growing income streams of the majority.
So the most likely club from last season's bottom six to break into the play-off positions this season should be Gloucester, one of England's few rugby cities, but consistency has been elusive for the Cherry and Whites, sublime one week, dire the next.
The Gloucester of old was more mongrel than pedigree. If the welcome for visiting sides at Gloucester was hostile, it was nothing compared to the reception provided by the home eight, but in recent years thoroughbreds have galloped on Kingsholm, talented but temperamental.
Gloucester have some catching up to do. Leicester, a club that is invincible in the semi-finals but vulnerable on the last day when consistency is rarely enough, Northampton and Saracens, who will all be less encumbered by international calls than they were last season, are very difficult to beat on their own grounds, a quality Harlequins developed in 2011-12 and it was a significant factor in Exeter's rise.
Sale will be this season's wild card, a club that is unrecognisable from the side that flirted with relegation in a steady decline after winning the Premiership in 2006. Danny Cipriani is the headline signing, but the Sharks' director of rugby has made sure that the outside-half is complemented by a ball-winning pack.
Their new ground at Salford is 10 metres wider than their former home at Edgeley Park, and if there is one wish for the Premiership season it is that coaches have been watching the southern hemisphere season, in particular the Chiefs and the All Blacks.
Neither side might have to worry about relegation, but that is too often used as an excuse in the Premiership. It is a question of mindset, and Sir Clive Woodward made a valid point this month when he said, looking ahead to the new season, that a current weakness in rugby was that coaching the team collective had taken on an overwhelming importance and that it was easier than coaching individuals.
"World Cup-winning teams need Podium Players," he wrote in the Sunday Times, "people who are the best in the world in their position, or the second or, at worst, third best. All the rugby players want is a fair chance of achieving the same level of success as the Olympians. It is rugby's turn to pick up the baton and run with it."
Amen to that and it will be interesting to see how Shane Geraghty fares on his return to the Premiership with London Irish. When he left the Exiles for Northampton three years ago, he was one of English rugby's brightest prospects, a player who lived off his wits and saw reward in risk.
Northampton was too much like a strait-jacket and he came to be used as an impact player from the bench when the Saints were losing, a waste of talent. Geraghty has perhaps not helped himself in his career, but with Brian Smith back in harness at London Irish, the Exiles should be worth watching again.
The RaboDirect Pro 12 also launches this week. It suffers in comparison to the Premiership, partly because the "national" media is Anglocentric, but it does not help itself with kick-off times that avoid Saturday afternoons, even though all the teams in the tournament are able to fill that slot in Europe.
Ospreys are the defending champions but, along with the other three Welsh regions, have agreed a self-imposed salary cap this season, roughly on the level of the Premiership's with academy players factored out. Most of Ireland's international players will miss the opening weekends, something that rankles with the Premiership clubs as they demand a change to the qualification process for the Heineken Cup.
Teams in the Pro 12 may not have to worry about relegation, but a consequence of that is a pile-up of largely meaningless games at the end of a season that puts off paying spectators. It is not, like the Premiership and Top 14, a club tournament; it is largely run by the unions involved and, as the months pass, they will have a big decision to make.
FULL OF DEANS?
Robbie Deans, it is said, has four matches to hold on to his job as Australia coach. His contract runs until next year, after the Lions tour, but a poor start to the new Rugby Championship by the Wallabies has struck up a chorus of discontent from Sydney to Perth.
Australia's two defeats were against New Zealand, by common consent the leading team in the world by some way, but as a Kiwi in charge of the All Blacks' greatest rivals, his reservoir of goodwill has never been high.
Last Saturday's 22-0 defeat in Auckland was the first time Australia had drawn a blank against the All Blacks in 50 years, although the game was no more one-sided than the World Cup semi-final at the same venue last October.
Deans's record against teams other than his native New Zealand is not unimpressive. The Wallabies have won their last four Tests against the Springboks, including last year's World Cup quarter-final, they have beaten the Six Nations champions Wales seven matches in succession and they have triumphed in their last five meetings with the World Cup finalists France.
But, under Deans, they have won three Tests in 17 against the All Blacks, and it is 10 years since they held the Bledisloe Cup. Given the showing of the Australian teams in this year's Super 15, the two reverses against New Zealand this month were hardly a surprise, and the Wallabies were without eight players, including David Pocock and James Horwill.
The former Australia coach Alan Jones, whose one tilt at a World Cup, back in 1987, ended with a worse return than last year - they finished fourth after losing the play-off to Wales - is leading those calling for Deans to be fired, pointing out that when he enjoyed success with the Crusaders, he was surrounded by good players.
The same point was made by the New Zealand coach, Steve Hansen, when defending Deans, who moved to Australia after failing to become the All Blacks' coach in 2007. "Just because Australia aren't winning against us doesn't make Robbie a bad coach," said Hansen. "He had a great record with the Crusaders, where he obviously had a really good team.
"I've spent a lot of time coaching with him, he's not a bad coach. Any team that gets his services are going to benefit from it. They're still the number two side in the world. He's copping a lot of flak for losing to us, rather than people looking at the bigger picture."
The Australian Rugby Union is looking beyond the short-term, saying Deans's position is not up for discussion, but pressure is building ahead of the Lions next year. The biggest picture is the 2015 World Cup, which is being hosted by England. On the two occasions it has been staged in Britain previously, in 1991 and 1999, the Wallabies returned home with the Webb Ellis Cup.
guardian
