Aviva Premiership: Geoffrey Riddle's season preview

Guinness Premiership / Geoffrey Riddle / 03 September 2010 / Leave a comment Free £25 Bet View Market

Can Northampton take the trophy from Leicester?

"Sale kick off the season when they host Newcastle on Friday night."

The Aviva Premiership begins this weekend and Betting.Betfair's rugby union supermo has some interesting points to make prior to the big kick off.

The layers have priced up this season's Aviva Premiership as if only Leicester, Bath, Northampton and Saracens are in with a chance of winning both the regular season and the grand final.

Leicester, who have made the playoff final for the last six years and have headed the league for the past two seasons, are understandably short at [3.0] for the league and [2.86] for victory at Twickenham.

The Tigers had nine players in the England's elite player squad last season, and began their campaign with a host of injured stars such as Toby Flood and Sam Vesty, while Harry Ellis and Tom Croft missed out the first few games.

Coach Richard Cockerill gives up only five players to England's cause this season, and after yet another trophy in the cabinet favourite backers should have no qualms in taking a price only marginally shorter than last year in either market.

Leicester conceded just 18 tries in their 22 match league season, and even after the IRB tinkered with the tackle laws in February to give advantage to the attacking side, Cockerill's squad subsequently dropped only two matches on their march to glory.

Similarly, Bath also finished last season with a flourish, with the West Country side winning 11 of their last 13 matches after a disastrous start due to a raft of injuries. Their charge to the playoffs coincided with the change in tackle laws, and also the return of flyhalf Butch James. James not only has the kicking game to get his side out of trouble, but also the distribution skills to ignite Bath's fast-flowing approach.

Steve Meehan's side passed and offloaded more than any team last season, and the signing of Lewis Moody is a master stroke. The England flanker is the perfect instrument with which to play the new tackle laws, and Moody will be useful grease to Bath's attacking machine.

The layers are wary of Bath's challenge, however, making them as short as [5.8] for the regular season, but the two teams who look over-priced to my mind are Saracens and Northampton.

Both sides lost seven games last season, six of which were by fewer than seven points. Of the two, Saracens look to have the most scope for improvement, with director of rugby Brendan Venter recruiting shrewdly in the off-season.

He has brought in some serious muscle, with Deon Carstens and the disgraced Matt Stevens propping up the front-row, while block-busting Scotland international Kelly Brown joins the back row.

Where Brown will look to shore up the fringes around the rucks and scrum, England scrumhalf Richard Wigglesworth will be looking to attack there. And then there is David Strettle on the wing, who certainly provides an upgrade out wide to the departing Richard Haughton.

Venter has lost the reliability of flyhalf Glenn Jackson but, on the plus side for backers, Saracens have the most fiendishly difficult Heineken Cup group. Clermont, Leinster and Racing Metro all take up opposition in Pool Two, so it is conceivable that the Men in Black may well be out of Europe early in their campaign and therefore left to concentrate on the league.

Although Saracens kicked-off last season by employing the kick-chase strategy that handed the Springboks the Tri-Nations 12 months ago, Venter changed tactics once it was clear the tackle laws meant that running the ball was the best policy. Saracens finished the season with six wins out of eight, and they look a fair price at [6.6] to top the league.

On their day, Northampton probably have the most talented side in the whole of Europe. They showed this when beating Munster at Franklin's Gardens in the Heineken Cup, and then going down to the former champions of Europe just 12-9 in Limerick. Their game looks ideally suited to the new laws, having won the most rucks last season, and if it wasn't for their poor goalkicking they might have performed a hell of a lot better in the league.

Flyhalf Stephen Myler was their most accurate goal-kicker with a 65.82 per cent strike-rate, and it's a shame Jim Mallinder has not rectified that by bringing in someone who can bisect the posts. You would have thought that with ex-England flyhalf Paul Grayson, and points-scoring legend Dusty Hare amongst the backroom staff at Northampton, Myler, Shane Geraghty and Bruce Reihana would all kick more accurately.

Still, they look much the most likely side to break Leicester's vice-like grip on the playoff final so see if you can better the [4.8] on offer in the grand final market before Sale kick off the season when hosting Newcastle on Friday night.

Tags: Aviva Premiership betting, Bath, Geoffrey Riddle, Leicester Tigers, Newcastle, Rugby Union betting, Sale, Saracens