Rebrand loses letters and hopes to gain viewers

New top-flight season begins tonight with much to like, but odd schedule and missing players make it a soft launch

- Gerard Meagher

The PREM seas sta tonigh wi Sal Shar hosti Glouce befo Harleq enterta Bat an Newcas Re Bul fac Sarac tomorr.

That is a sentence, as uneasy on the eye as it may be, of which you can just about make sense. Much like the Premiership's decision to lose a few letters as part of its rebrand. On we go to the new, pithier frontier. With a new logo, new trophy, new investment, new signings and, it seems, miraculously, yet another attempt to avoid the possibility of relegation without actually legislating for it.

With next to no British & Irish Lions available, undercooked England players and a new existential threat in R360 - a breakaway league promising untold riches and, perhaps not insignificantly, with an equally pithy name. There is so much to like about the Prem, plenty to lament and, as ever, much in a state of flux.