End of season grades

Se7en,

Caldy arrived in the Championship through the same rugby model that it has now. As a club it never pushed to be a full time professional club, why would it aspire to that. Professional rugby doesn't work in the UK as 10 technically insolvent Premiership clubs attest to that. Technically insolvent in the sense that all 10 premiership clubs lose money, virtually all of them have balance sheets where liabilities exceed assets (and that is after listing their investment in P shares at a whopping £17m!!) and they are only kept afloat by the largesse of the RFU and by their owners who are all probably desperate for some sort of exit.

Over lunch last Saturday the President of the RFU set out for me and the other guests on our table the vision that new US Investors could buy in to the franchise model take out CVC and everything would be onwards and upwards for rugby in England. 

I don't buy in to this 'theory' at all. When every business in a sector is making a loss the sector is a basket case. With the concussion class action also hanging over rugby it will take a very brave private equity player to bankroll a franchise model in English rugby with the many hundreds more millions that would take.

 CVC take 27% off the top for their previous investment of a few hundred  million which probably gives them a workable yield but I cannot see the exit for them other than another private equity house taking them out. 

I liked rugby as it was and I like how Caldy go about things, I have no interest in professional rugby and the Premiership's broken cartel. Perhaps this makes me a dinosaur

I'd give Caldy an A+ which is a lot higher than I'd grade the majority of the other 23 so-called professionally run clubs at the top level.

3,000 season tickets, plus walk up sales, will certainly give you the largest crowds in the league.

It should mean one of the larger playing budgets.

But, that will depend on how much the stadium costs to run, and how much of that the rugby teams has to pay for.

And by how much owners top up the budget at other clubs. 

We will know how good the side iis, this time next year.

I see no reason why that would be any different in The Champ. 

But that’s a guess!

I cannot comment on Chinnor and Cambridge but Caldy are absolutely not reliant on DR. This is not what Caldy is about

Caldy generally have one or two young Sale Sharks players in their match day squad of 23. In some Championship matches this season there were no DR players and on a very few occasions there were 3 or 4 DR players in the match day squad.

Tristan Woodman an excellent openside played the most throughout the season in I would reckon more than half the games.

The teams that I am fairly certain have made signficantly greater use of DR than Caldy.....Ampthill, London Scottish, Hartpury, Bedford, Cornish Pirates, Nottingham, 

Perhaps others can confirm my view

Seven,

See below

Nye Thomas - not in 2024/25

Reuben Birch -  a few games in 23/24 but not in 2024/25

Tristan Woodman - played the majority of Caldy games 23/24 & 24/25

Elliot Gourlay - ever present for Caldy in 2020/21 in National leagues but hasn't featured for Caldy in the Championship 

Ethan Caine - 2 or 3 games in 2022/23 and possibly one game in 2023/24 but not in 2024/25

Reketi Ma-asi White 40 minutes in 2023/24 before doing his hamstring, 1 game in 2024/25

Tom Curtis two or three games at the beginning of 2024/25 season but not since.

Jacob Tansey signed for Caldy from Sedgley Park in August 2024 

Other than as indicated above I think the Sale Sharks players who have been utilised by Caldy this season have generally been Sale Academy/under 21 players with the possible exception of Joe Bedlow, James Harper and Alex Groves who have notched up a few appearances.

I would absolutely commend the 4 or 5 young Sharks Academy lads who have featured, I think all were under 20 with at least 3 being only 18. They gave everything they had and I hope they enjoyed becoming a Raver if only for part of a game.