After 15 years as a Saracens player, Alex Goode knows Premiership rugby inside out. At the age of 35, he is also among the league’s most respected and perceptive voices. Accordingly, his blunt assessment of the 2022-23 campaign to date has real resonance. “It’s been a worrying season,” Goode says, softly. “When you’re not sure about your livelihood … I think that’s a very scary time.”
Goode, speaking on the eve of his side’s semi-final against Northampton at StoneX Stadium, is referring less to his own club, back in the big time again after their own well-documented salary cap travails, than the domestic game as a whole. There is not a player in the country who has watched the demise of Worcester and Wasps without an involuntary shiver and, with dark financial clouds still hanging over London Irish, even the most thrilling of title run-ins cannot dispel all the gloom. The players, as so often, find themselves caught in the middle.
