Hmmm...there is already a gate with a small ticket booth on the Castlebar Park (west) side of the ground which was usually open pre-pandemic, but has not been this year or last. I'd like to see that re-opened, as it saves me about ten minutes of walking and is closest to public transport for anyone coming by train. The loss of the 2nd floodlit 3G pitch would be a shame, but the only other option would be to knock down the grandstand, and that would take out c.500 existing seats. Will be interesting to see what is published tomorrow.

Do we know there'll be published results tomorrow? TRP says the applications being discussed by RFU Bd of Directors tomorrow, but whether that means there'll be anything issued straight away is another matter. The article also mentions a RFU Council meeting this Friday; possibly some matters will have to be rubber-stamped?

Based on the previous audit at Castle Park which gave approval I will assume this one will be the same. But one never knows if the thought process has changed in the interim 

Indeed, I was basing my assumption on the article title 'Promotion hopefuls hear their fate on Tuesday'. I do not know if anything will be published, and don't have any alternative source of information on the announcement timing.

This is very important because the brick aided by the foot  to stop anyone else getting in, is frowned upon. 

Make sure that any cups or mugs are washed before serving the wine.

I think there's unlikely to be certainty; even if both clubs pass the audit, neither one might finish top... Champ season could be alive until Ealing host the Pirates on 26/3, or possibly the final game for the current top 3 a week later.

No. It’s a prerequisite for promotion that the club must have won the Championship.

Still a four horse race.

Redruth have been there before, in those days there was funding for travel.

But that went away.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/02/21/exclusive-premiership-reserve-teams-could-play-championship/" rel="nofollow - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/02/21/exclusive-premiership-reserve-teams-could-play-championship/

Premiership reserve sides would compete in a hybrid league alongside “aspirational” Championship teams who would, in theory, be eligible for promotion to the top flight. An initial version of the proposal has already been unanimously rejected by Championship clubs but some fear that the RFU will force through the changes at the behest of Premiership Rugby. A formal announcement is expected on Friday on the direction of travel for the Championship.

This is one of those days when I feel that the pain of relegation to level 3 was in fact dodging a bullet. 

“An outside chance”?? 3 wins behind with 9 to play…takes optimism to a new level surely?

With 12 Premiership second teams in the Championship there would be room for 1-4 "aspirational" Championship teams.

Who would need ringfencing when a Championship  team would have to end up above 12 Premiership second teams to gain promotion?

I agree with Rabbie Burns - time for the RFU to be reformed or replaced completely.

Completely agree. The RFU are simply not doing what they are supposed to do. Let them and the Prem go their own way and create a new organisation that has the interests of the game at heart. The value of The Championship is undeniable yet the RFU seem to take every opportunity to undermine it.

So the Premiership admit they are terrible at developing talent.

The RFU staff in charge of player development have not resigned.

And the RFU wants to give them more responsibility, not less.

You could not make it up.

Take the academies away from the Premiership.

Cut the funding by £1m per Premiership club as they are doing less. 

Have a system to provide academy players to clubs at levels 2,3 and 4 on an equitable basis.

And an auction for players moving onto full contracts.

You had respect for the RFU?

Jaysus.

Utter sh!t3s.

If they are looking for a way to completely disenfranchize the supporters of rugby clubs below the Prem, then they will announce this 'fait accomplis' on Friday.

Sadly, apart from Leicester, most Prem reserve sides will end up having to leave the gates open for matches with bouncers throwing people into the grounds, such will be the appeal.

Not for me, thanks, and not for a good many more level two (three, etc) supporters, I'm quite sure.

Goodbye rugby. Been nice knowing you.

Strikes me it would be quicker to shaft the premiership than every other club - or are we facing the sport's RFL/BARLA schism moment? 

The proposals are complete nonsense and will not work. It's purely an attempt to justify the disgraceful lack of funding and to cement ringfencing. Its the ultimate legacy to the dreadful decision to hand control(or was the league annexed by the RFU) of the league to the RFU about 10 years ago when the Championship was created out of the old First Division Rugby.

A simple analyses of the demise of the old Premiership A league will show that Premier clubs cannot raise a second XV every week. Injury, front row issues, smaller yet more expensive squads led to a raft of cancelled fixtures. The loan system not perfect but at least it gives Premiership players game time and helps Championship clubs improve.

The biggest issue is for the existing clubs in the League. Strong leadership is now required to demonstrate the folly of this move to the RFU council. Funding of the league is now so low that a breakaway could be contemplated. What about the growing number of sports streaming channels ? Would they be prepared to help fund a new league outside of the RFU pyramid? The recent influx of Venture Capital into PRL and now the Six nations shows that capital is available for our game. Is this heresy?  Dare to dream Championship clubs ,take back control of your destiny .It no good looking to the RFU for future funding and support .Its clear they have no interest in level 2 and just want to accelerate its withering on the vine.

I'm not sure you've thought this through - unless you're seriously suggesting that the solution to the Premiership clubs sticking two fingers up at all the clubs below them is for the Championship clubs to stick two fingers up at all the clubs above and below them? 

That just creates another cartel looking to protect its trough.

Does the relegated Premiership club then play against 'A' teams or do they become the 'aspiring Championship club' and lose everything, including their 'A' team?

Or do they just keep promoting clubs until they run out of aspiring ones....

The playing of Premiership second teams in division PREMIERSHIP 2 wouldn't make any sense regarding promotion.

 But it's better than watching BEDHAMPTON BLUESAINTS, let our clubs get back to playing in leagues with no attachment to the  big boys. 

Just imagine, how is this for a scene. You turn up on a match day, you know each player by sight and name

This is the season that just didn't matter, a cup competition that has no appeal whatsoever.

The quicker there is a clear break the better. Just  my opinion, others will "advise" with more hands on knowledge and I respect that  I just want Bedford Blues to be exactly that.

What this might require from the rest of us is to say "right none of us are taking any loan players from Prem clubs" You run your club, we'll run ours - As has been suggested the sooner we're out of this RFU shambles the better

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/02/22/clubs-could-demand-1-million-extra-funding-rfu-proposed-hybrid/" rel="nofollow - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/02/22/clubs-could-demand-1-million-extra-funding-rfu-proposed-hybrid/

I am not entirely sure if that is true, the bulk of the income came from the broadcasting contracts for the internationals and sponsorship of England teams.

However, the RFU currently spends £43m on overheads - which is roughly what they spend on the professional game, and three times what they spend on the community game.

So to give the Premiership sides more, the RFU would either have to lock the gin cabinet, or completely cut the budget to all clubs outside the top 24.

So, it's back to three years ago's rejected plan of Championship teams being subsidiaries of Premiership franchisess. How do you fancy Jersey being part of Bath Rugby? Probably about as much as I fancy Coventry being part of Wasps or Worcester.

Just about the most sensible suggestion I have ever read about anything!

Here are the things about the RFU that infuriate me and everyone else I suspect

1. The fact that most of the RFU's money goes to only 12 clubs - who are professional in nature run and owned by business people who are acting solely in their own interests- how can this be justified?- give the most to the very few that have the most!

2. Now almost nothing is provided by the RFU to the other 2000+ community clubs

3. The RFU patronisingly tells the 2,000+ clubs staffed by volunteers that they need to do x and y and run their clubs in a certain way and obey a whole stack of rules which the RFU imposes. 

4. The RFU never seems to do anything other than pander to the Premiership clubs. Now they are proposing to rip up a century or so of tradition and heritage because the Premiership want some game time for their starlets. It is a disgraceful proposal which will be obsfucated by PR Spin.

The RFU do not understand who they should be accountable to. They should be accountable to their 2,000 member clubs and not to a cartel of businessmen and their private equity partners . 

Do the RFU care anything for club rugby as played by the 2,000+ community clubs in England ?

Another great suggestion

Big Eddie, first apologies for not coming to Caldy last Saturday and congratulations on the win and best of luck.

The problem was we "modernized" the administration, giving far too much power to the exec - who were dominated by money. And the internationals generate all the RFU revenue, with the Premiership appearing to provide the players. So the exec feel they need the Premiership.

The community clubs are essentially apathetic, provided they get a game on Saturday. CB positions are rarely contested - partly because, despite the impression it is all RFU jollies, the committee meetings and club visits do take a lot of time. But if we look at the recent votes on letting 2nd teams into the ECC  - a decision that impacts almost every club - the votes got very low turnout.

It takes a lot of bad will for county clubs to take a stand - as your local clubs have by withdrawing from the ECC and setting up the Lancashire league.

 A very pertinent response. I did this morning write a more apoplectic post on the relationship between the RFU Senior Management and the CBs which I decided to send to Richard to moderate before I posted it on the forum.

You are of course right. 

The management of grass roots clubs are generally too busy in their daily lives to wade into a fight with the Constituent Bodies and RFU Senior Management and I do not for one minute blame them for that. However, because of understandable apathy by the grass roots clubs the RFU and the elite clubs can take massive advantage to prosecute their own strategy and agenda.

It shouldn't be this way though. If the RFU had any interest whatsoever in their 'shareholders' they would act differently. They don't have any such real interest and the CBs act as a bulwark between the RFU and the grassroots clubs, perpetuating the hegemony of elite rugby (which is a very small minority of interest) over club rugby.

What will happen..............massively disillusioned volunteers in grass root rugby clubs will just walk away without being replaced and club rugby in England will suffer even more. 

I used to be very passionate about all of this...........but I don't care any more. The naked self interest of elite rugby, the RFU and the Blazeratti has reached such a level that I do not think it can be turned around.

The RFU should of course care massively. But most of all of this is of their making and they are blind and indifferent to how their pandering to the Premiership and the elite will surely lead to the demise of the community game.

No payment of players below Prem and the hybrid Champ league, no reliance on sugar Daddies and boom and bust etc.

However, they will of course still need to rely on their community clubs who have had their aspirations torn to pieces to provide excellent facilities and coaching to the players of the future who get hoovered up by Prem Academies to feed the national team.

So what aspirations will our clubs have in the future? 

I would have absolutely no problem in the RFU splitting the game between the Professional teams and everyone else. They should do that and let the professional clubs and their private equity backers fund themselves. TUPE the RFU staff who work for the professional game into the new professional vehicle and rent  Twickenham to this professional vehicle when they need it for their professional international games 

With a very substantially reduced cost base the RFU can help to administer the game for the  other 2000+ clubs.....

Hopefully will meet you at Rams. 

I think your 50/100 year timescale is way off the mark though.......more likely 5/10 years. There are very few volunteers coming through into the senior game........most volunteers are in their 60s upwards. With no real identity or aspiration to be passionate about few younger volunteers will emerge. Who wants to do the hard work to benefit Premiership Clubs and their starlets and the RFU? 

At Caldy most of the hard work in terms of administration, grounds and clubhouse is done by people in their 60's through to 90's with most at the upper end of that age range. I am sure it is the same at Rams and virtually every community club in the country.

The RFU has taken this legion of vounteers for granted for many years, and in turn patronised them and given them and their clubs 'plaques and platitudes' whilst they reserve the huge amounts of money for the Premiership Clubs, the Elite Game and of course the very important and expensive people in the Senior Management of the RFU.

There must be circa 15,000 unpaid volunteers across the breadth of England's rugby clubs putting in say on average a total of maybe 4 hrs a week each......perhaps 60,000 hours a week in total.... at 40 weeks a year that comes to 2.4 million hours of unpaid effort per annum at say £9.50 per hour (minimum wage) that is £22.8m per annum or thereabouts across 2,000 clubs, and if a more realsitic say £12 an hour is used the total is in the region of £29m per annum

The RFU provide the self interested 12 Premiership Clubs around £28m of funding per annum to help these 'businesses'. Nice symmetry!

Lets see how well the RFU and the Premiership Clubs get on when there are no Community Clubs and no 'pathway' for the elite game.

Unfortunately for the game and the RFU the next generations are unlikely to accept a position as a 'volunteer mug ' but will follow the RFU's lead and turn their backs on the community game......in my view there will be an accelerating decline in community club rugby in the next 5 to 10 years and there will be no community rugby at all in 15 years

The RFU are taking the same view of the Community Game as World Leaders are of Climate Change. By the time the RFU recognise the damage they have wrought ......it will be too late .....it is almost certainly already too late to ever reverse it. 

For those who suggest that the 'Community game' should split from the RFU are living in cloud cuckoo land. How will they fund themselves? They complain they don't get enough money now, but they would be getting nothing in the future. We have seen that there is no commercial, media or mass spectator appeal/interest in the 'Community game' no matter what others think. It is proved time and time again by the lack of sponsors knocking at the door or the broadcasting companies wanting to show the game each. Yes there will be some interest but they will pay peanuts or more likely ask for money to show the game.  

If the clubs aren't happy with the status quo, then they need to use their powers as members of the RFU to change it.  The trouble is there is so little consensus about what is better. 

Championship clubs have their own agenda which is different to the Old Hasbeens playing on a park pitch at level 8 etc.  Unless the 'community game' has a united front, the Premiership clubs will continue to walk all over them. 

The only money in the game is at the International level - hence why all the Countries want to play more games - it brings in the TV revenue, it sells shirts, it fills up the grounds, it sells booze.  Not even the Premiership clubs are anyway close to replicating this - which is why they still and hang off the RFU coat tails, because they know which side of the bread is buttered.  They won't leave the RFU because it makes no financial sense to them.  

I do wander why any clubs wants promotion to the Premiership. It certainly isn't to become rich - as we see from the balance sheets of most of the exitising members, but I will defend any clubs right to try and play in the Premiership under a fair and open promotion/relegation system (no ringfencing, no gerrymandering of facilities etc).

We must acknowledge that 'aspirational' is a every changing dynamic. We can't close the door on clubs because today they aren't 'aspirational' but tomorrow their circumstances could change and they may want to progress according to their ability and/or finances. 

That explains the reasons for players but it doesn't explain the reason for clubs.  

For the former it is a benefit of fame and fortune, for the latter it is a case of pride goes before a fall...

The RFU have pretty much removed the last vestiges of any financial support to clubs outside the Premiership anyway. How can it equitable for a Premiership Club (which would almost certainly be insolvent without the RFU support)  to get £2.5 million a year from the RFU and a National 1 club which has to fund the cost of matches the length and breadth of the country gets nothing..........

I don't understand how the RFU can ever justify such inequality of treatment

They can't. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog. 

The latest RFU accounts show £40m for "Professional rugby investment" and £17m in "Rugby development investment", half of the later in effect peoples cost, but the rest, in theory, should be going to the 'Community game' in some size shape or form. It is this that any breakaway would lose. 

The £40m is in effect paying for the use of England internationals - on those accounts probably 90% which are men, as the womens funding I think is a later period.  With an average of England squad size of say 40 players per season, they are in effect paying a £1m per player per year, or say £84k per game over 12 internationals. 

Yes it is a simplistic calculation but that is what it boils down - that is why the RFU pay the Premiership clubs so much - to have access to their players for the internationals. 

They are paying well over the odds for them.....

I was told today that both Doncaster and Ealing have been audited on site and are awaiting the outcome of the decision as to their suitability and compliance to a required criteria. It was said that the exact requirements are unknown.

The entry into the Premiership is not being discussed until there is a clear winner of the Championship. I believe no decision will be made until they see which team wins the league and in my opinion only Doncaster or Pirates will be allowed to enter , purely  based on geography. I could be wrong but I do not believe Ealing Trailfinders have any possibility of being 'allowed to enter the Premiership.

It is a bit better now London Irish have returned. Before that, the South West had five teams to London's two. And L&SE is the most populous of the four divisions.

BTW rereading my earlier post, it might be too harsh. Those organizing lower league clubs are obviously not apathetic about rugby, merely about the structure of a league they are not involved in - and which could be half a dozen promotions away, so subject to several reorganizations before they get there. . 

What do you consider a big attendance ?. I went to the London Irish v Exeter Chiefs game recently and they had 11, 800 crowd , that is a big crowd in Rugby terms. Bedford the best supported team is no where near that.

You can not give the tickets away and get a crowd to turn up. The reality is that it is a minority sport in relation to crowd attendance. Less and less people are playing the sport and crowds will only ever drop down. 

Who were they?

Gloucester & Worcester are in the Midlands & Bristol in the West

London Irish were in Reading - is that South West or London??

The only team I know in the South West Is Exeter.

After that you move into Cornwall

The RFU (2006) - it's different under RFU logic

There seems to be a common misconception that Gloucester and Bristol are in the South West. Based on my trips home to Penzance I can confirm that Bristol is 190 miles north east and Gloucester 220. Worcester is another 30/40 miles north and I hear a lot of Brummie accents there.

So were does this “South West” region finish? 

In Rugby terms they are in the South West.  From  https://www.swrugby.co.uk/" rel="nofollow - https://www.swrugby.co.uk/

For the purposes of Rugby

The South West is: Gloucestershire, Beds, Berks and Oxon, Dorset and Wilts, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall.

London and the South East: Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Essex, Eastern Counties [Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Isle of Ely (but not Huntingdon or Peterborough)], Herts, Mddx

Midlands: North Midlands [Hereford, Worcester, Shropshire], Warwickshire Staffordshire, Notts, Lincs and Derby, Leicester and Rutland, East Midlands [Northants, Beds, Huntingdon and Peterborough].

North: Cumbria, Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland.

These divisions have up until now been used to locate teams in levels 4 and 5 as well as the county leagues. Except Herts and Mddx are separate CBs but run a single league structure. Dorset and Wilts are one CB but run separate leagues.  The Midlands Division does not split beyond four leagues in the ECC, but CBs organize second team competitions.

I think that they'll give requirements for this the same way that they did for funding - retrospectively, mendaciously, and in line with whatever supports the decision that have been made by their PRL paymasters.

Sums up their ongoing brain fog really.

When the late great Chalky White was the Divisional Manager he described the South West as spreading from Lands End to within 9 miles of Twickenham and 15 miles of the centre of Birmingham.

The history is irrelevant.

Only an idiot would think that something to the south of the  lat of the centre point of the country, and therefore the midlands, could be described as North Midlands.

So by your definition (distance and funny accents), London and Newcastle can't both be in England...?

Berkshire, for some reason, is South-West whereas Hampshire which goes out further west is South East!

It's why Maidenhead jumped at the chance to transfer to N3LSE this season, no more long haul trips to Cornwall for them from N3SW (they just have to go to the north of Norfolk instead!)

The Northern Line doesn't have the northernmost station on the network, but it does have the most southerly (Morden).

The Jubilee Line was not opened in time for the Queen's silver jubilee.

The Circle Line is no longer a circle.

And when the Central line went all the way to Ongar, it had one of the stations most distant from the centre.

Take that into account and it all makes perfect sense.

We have drifted slightly, partly my fault.

I think we are all agred, the plan is daft.

It seems to be a fishing exercise to get the Premiership more money, which currently EnglandRugby does not have.

Is that enough to stop it?

If not is thee any way we could effectively oppose i?