There has never been a Premiership run-in quite like this one

on Sunday, the sense of frustration, of missed opportunity was palpable. To a man they believed they would have pulled off the greatest European victory in their history without making quite so many first-half mistakes. “You know that emoji with the monkey face? That’s how I feel,” said Danny Care. “We genuinely felt we could get close against a team as good as Toulouse and could have won. Maybe we should have. Now it’s back to the Premiership and we’ve got to dry our tears pretty quickly.

Only Gloucester – who can console themselves with having reached the Challenge Cup final – and Newcastle, who have lost all 16 of their matches so far can be considered completely out of the playoff race. Indeed, Newcastle’s unwanted perfect record can be taken as one of a number of contributing factors to such a blanket finish to the season insofar as all other sides have consistently taken points off them.

Clearly the absence of promotion and relegation is having an impact, so too the lowering of the salary cap. Both have levelled the playing field, made for a more bloated middle with only Newcastle cut adrift at the bottom and no one storming clear at the front of the race. That, in turn, led to a relentless run of 16 straight weeks of Premiership and Champions or Challenge Cup matches between mid-October and the Six Nations. As Northampton’s director of rugby, Phil Dowson, recalled last week: “Brutal, week in, week out. No player is going to play every minute out of that and if they do they’re not going to play particularly well, or they’re going to get injured.

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