Premiership faces a watershed season when drifting is no longer enough

Every now and again on social media a video clip will emerge of a lonely surfer trying to catch a skyscraper-high wave off the coast of Portugal. Time it right and the long ride down is truly epic. Get it slightly wrong and the consequences of that misjudgment do not bear thinking about.

In many ways the 2022-23 Premiership season feels broadly similar. Increasingly there are jagged financial rocks everywhere and the game’s physicality continues to make it unsuitable for the faint of heart.

But when everything clicks and talent is fully allowed to express itself few team sports are more compulsively watchable. Take a risk and the rewards can be significant.

Therein lies the shared challenge for all concerned as the new Premiership campaign commences beneath the Friday night lights in Bristol and Salford. Club rugby union has reached a point where, for assorted reasons, it badly needs to make a collective splash. Drifting around in the commercial shallows, not particularly bothered if it catches the eye, is no longer enough.

While that does not necessarily mean razzle-dazzle rugby for the sake if it, it does require the game to do more to showcase its appealing side.

Bristol have done a grand job on opening nights at Ashton Gate in the past and over 21,000 fans will again be present for the latest West Country derby. But this time, with a cost-of-living crisis looming, there is no avoiding reality: the product simply has to be entertaining enough to leave everyone clamouring for more.

If this does not obviously chime with Johann van Graan’s plan to rebuild a damaged Bath one carefully laid breeze block at a time, the Bears’ director of rugby, Pat Lam, is convinced that style also matters. “Winning is one thing but the way