Avoiding the Long Drop
THERE’S AN old adage that everybody believes in competition until they are the ones that lose out.
When winners become losers, their perspective changes rapidly. And so it has proved in England’s Premiership, where the concept of automatic relegation has come under the spotlight as never before this season.
The main cause was a highly competitive season in which several clubs who never expected to be relegation candidates were drawn into a relegation dogfight that only ended in the penultimate round of the competition with Newcastle’s relegation.
The sight of Leicester – twice winners of the Heineken Cup and Premiership champions a record 10 times – experiencing what legendary soccer coach Sir Alex Ferguson memorably referred to as “squeaky bum time” at the end of
