and the first match of next season is:

[RogerE]

[NellyWellyWaspy]

Funny that. There was a poll and it asked who would you like as the first game? I answered at home to Irish :-)

[RogerE]

The rest of the rounds:

Round 2 Sat 26 Oct Away Gloucster

Round 3 Sat 2 Nov Home Bath

Round 4 Fri 8 May Away Sale

Round 5 Sat 30 Nov Away Exeter

Round 6 Sat Dec 21 Home Quins

Round 7 Fri Dec 27 Away Bristol

Round 8 Sun 5 Jan Home Northampton


The rest of the matches dates (except final round) will be decided by BT later

Round 9 24/25 Jan Away Worcester

Round 10 14/15 Feb Away Leicester

Round 11 21/22 Feb Home Saracens

Round 12 28/29 Feb Away Irish

Round 13  6/7 Mar Home Gloucester

Round 14 20/21 Mar Away Northampton

Round 15 27/28 Mar Home Worcester

Round 16  10/11 Apr Home Sale

Round 17  17/18 Apr Away  Bath

Round 18 24/25 Apr Away Saracens

Round 19 8/9 May Home Leicester

Round 20 15/16 May Home Bristol

Round 21 29/20 May Away Harlequins

Round 22 Sat 6 June Home Exeter

[Rossm]

Enormous banana skin potential for that first game of the season.

[Raggs]

Yep, lots of times we've seen the promoting team come out all guns blazing recently, before slipping down.

[Shugs]

Not too worried about this one. LI have a lot of new players to bed in and we're at home. Wasps by 15.

[wasps]

I often have a theory that it's good to face a team like Saracens or Exeter first up.

Sometimes a team may be a little slow out of the blocks for the first game, so taking on Saracens where you wouldn't guarantee a victory anyway may lead to a nice bonus.


That being said, on paper it would get much better than Irish at home

[Marlow Nick]

Has anyone seen an analysis of which premiership squads are most impacted during the world cup?
I'd be interested to know if any sides have relatively easy timings for their key matches.

[westwaleswasp]

Not sure how anyone can call these with too much certainty as of now. I mean nobody predicted last year's misery-fest. If I had told you Lima would end up as being picked on/singled out as worst signing in the prem after so many said he would be an upgrade on the eventual prem ten of the year or that Wade would leave for US football after five games what would anyone have said? Ditto most here were calling for Daly to be dropped, and nobody would have predicted that last summer.

So my money will stay firmly in the back pocket until we can judge form a bit better....

[BG]

Has anyone seen an analysis of which premiership squads are most impacted during the world cup?
I'd be interested to know if any sides have relatively easy timings for their key matches.

Logic would say the top teams from the league last season will be affected the most but these clubs also have the stronger squads.

Also, the WC squad hasn't been announced yet.

What may be a bigger factor is what happens after the world cup and how the various players slip back into the mundane week in week out slog of the premiership.