LET IT rain. All summer and through the latter part of last week the heavens unleashed an unseasonal downpour upon the West Country, threatening to transform the first weekend of the Guinness Premiership into a midwinter mud bath.

Gloucester, with their dazzling array of attacking talent, will have watched each torrential hour from Friday onwards with dismay. But here is the paradox: Dean Ryan should thank the rain gods for every millimetre that slows down Kingsholm.

With conditions in their favour, Gloucester have consistently been the best team in England. Being top of the table for the past two seasons is testament to their consistency. When the muse has muddied her knees, however, when grind has been the modus operandi, Gloucester have gone missing.

No time more devastatingly so than against today’s visitors Leicester, who arrived for last season’s playoffs as expected cannon fodder for a Gloucester team who had just delivered two outstanding performances against Wasps and Bath, while Leicester sneaked into the playoffs via a late score at home to Harlequins. Leicester were not particularly good on the day but they were tough, determined and streetwise, and that was enough to knock the stuffing out of a team who panicked and piffled away what should have been another Twickenham final.

If Gloucester are to convert consistency into trophies, they have to learn to win when they play badly. If adverse underfoot conditions make an ugly win the only option, so much the better for Gloucester. Their supporters can cry an English summer’s worth of rain about the injustice of the playoff system, but while it exists they will remain nothing but the pacesetters for the likes of Leicester and Wasps to pick off in the home straight until they learn to hang in for the gruesome win.

What could be a more perfect start for Gloucester than a battling victory earned through the graft of the tight five instead of the usual pyrotechnics of the back-line? The purity of Ryan’s quest for performance (which, in theory, means the results look after themselves) can be quietly shelved from day one of the season against opposition who have worshipped the result over all else for the best part of two decades.

An intelligent rugby man, Ryan is, inadvertently, the problem. Logic insists that targeting a Premiership title or Heineken Cup trophy is ridiculous when the entire outcome is determined on one distant day in May. Too many permutations can destroy the best-conceived plans of the most assiduous manager, so Ryan has logically asserted that Gloucester should not be measured by trophies but the truer yardstick of regular performance and points accrued. Such good sense has not stopped Wasps and Leicester choosing the illogical route and targeting, demanding and winning cups.

In the formative stages, performance is the right way to measure a team. When it reaches a certain level the imperative of performance cedes ground to the results. Gloucester are way beyond that bar and have to move onto the less esoteric level of winning any way, anyhow; the old-fashioned Leicester style.

By not allowing their players to put defeat in the season’s major matches down to “just one of those things”, Ryan can challenge his squad to find the mental edge and gnarled determination that all champion teams possess.

Gloucester’s other Ryan is central to his team’s challenge. Lamb, the fly-half, is an instinctive player of genuine brilliance if somewhat dubious physicality. Most of the season he is Napoleonic in his marshalling of his team but, epitomising his teammates, when the pressure has mounted he has crumbled.

Last season he had a kick against Leicester to win the playoff and never looked like succeeding – from the minute before he snatched at the kick. It was sporting tragedy to see such a popular and gifted local figure nervously implode while the less talented, but massively maligned, Andy Goode grew in stature as the match headed towards its maelstrom of a finish.

Still young, the way in which Lamb is dismissed by many critics is preposterous, but this season he and Gloucester have to feel the pressure of expectation and confess to the full agony of defeat if they are to win the ones that count most and make the quantum leap from top place to champions.

The Tigers have a new coach in the excellent Heyneke Meyer but their thought processes will be as old as ever.

Capable of superb rugby (as when they demolished Wasps in the EDF semi-final), the Tigers’ most complete performances have a habit of being forgotten, such is their association with the tenacity and number rather than the beauty of their wins. Last season there were fewer five-star performances than usual - but still two finals - and this year one trophy will be the bare requirement.

If Lamb will feel the heat of expectation in the West Country, so too will Toby Flood in the East Midlands. Flood, above, has left Newcastle, where survival counts as success. The superlative spurts of play he orchestrated there will count for nothing at Leicester. The Tigers do not give marks for style. With the injured former Blue Bulls player Derick Hougaard also at Leicester, he must perform from today. Flood needs the pressure he has been without too long in the same way Gloucester must relish it instead of hide from it. Pressure, not talent, makes and breaks individuals and teams.