Hello, this is the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times.

Welcome along on a Monday morning, I'm Alfie Reynolds.

And alongside me to look back on a busy weekend of action in the Gallagher Prem is Will Callagher. Hi, Will. Hello, how's it going? And I'm very well, thank you, very well. Elgin, Alderman. How are you, Elgin? I'm very well, thank you. Elgin, we saw each other Friday night. We did indeed at Ashton Gates.

Yeah, Bristol against Bath, which at the time felt like a really significant result.

And then everything that has happened subsequently over the weekend means it wasn't quite as significant.

But Will, you were at a very important one on Sunday, Leicester.

It was significant enough to knock Bristol out of the running, which is what you're referring to, that Bristol won, that like turned around from that dreadful game against Northampton and now watched Exeter knock them out on Sunday.

So they thought, oh, well, back to normal.

But the Exeter, Leicester game, I found it sort of fascinating.

It felt quite old school, quite tense, tight, scruffy. It was like a game where people were trying to earn the right to go wide. It's very old school. Kicking penalties. There were loads of pens. I haven't seen a game like that for ages. A drop goal attempt. A drop goal attempt that went very wide. But ultimately didn't really change a scenario for either team.

We'll get onto all the perms, but basically both teams still just need to win next weekend and did before it anyway. Yeah, that's true. I suppose it would have, yeah, I get what you mean. It kind of would have put Lester in the box seat, wouldn't it? Or at least psychologically, they would have been above Bath and you'd have. But on points they wouldn't have been because they just would have had to win anyway, even though Bath had lost.

But yeah. it or at least psychologically they would have been above Bath and you'd But like on points they wouldn't have been because they just would have had to win anyway

even though Bath had lost but yeah but I enjoyed the weekend it felt like it was it's sort

of tapered to tension does that the right way of phrasing it totally well after the season that

we've had and we've spoken I think last week or the week before about the blowouts and

some of the score lines that actually one of the things I felt this weekend was it felt like knockout rugby without it being knockout rugby. Bristol Bath on Friday night. Bristol had to win to maintain their hopes of top four. You had Lester. Exeter really needed to win that to still be in the box seat and keep hold of fourth saris obviously

need to win as well so it felt like a weekend of where it mattered where there was a bit of tension

i think that was a great thing yeah absolutely the and i guess if you were designing the fixtures

you'd say well it's likely with a 10 team league that lots of games are going to matter by the end,

but it has fallen absolutely perfectly, hasn't it?

Luckily, really, that we're getting Bath Tigers, second v third, the winner hosts the loser

likely, although not necessarily, because then you've got Exodus Sarri's a straight shoot out for fourth on the final day like how good's that and should we do some other perms while we're here yeah well to run through it's pretty straightforward isn't it really but so northampton they're top they've secured a home semi-final which by the way is going to be the Friday game that Prem Rugby have confirmed that so

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