Jon Sharp fears Championship clubs are being ‘sold down the river’ by lack of RFU support and fundingHere is a statistic that, for many, still resonates down the years. When England made history by beating the All Blacks on Kiwi soil for the first time in 1973, no fewer than five of their starting XV played their club rugby for Coventry. Four of that quintet – David Duckham, Peter Rossborough, Peter Preece and Geoff Evans – were born and schooled locally. Their club, widely regarded as the strongest around, were the knockout champions of England in both 1973 and 1974.Almost half a century later this traditionally fertile hotbed of English rugby is engaged in a very different kind of struggle....
The national coach says the Championship is ‘something I don’t really worry about’, but the state of a league that helps to shape tomorrow’s stars should be a concernPeople often wrongly assume rugby union is defined by weeks such as this. England v France, all the “le Crunch” hoopla, the wider Six Nations equation, the millions watching on television. It matters, of course it does, but – as any French supporter will tell you – it barely scratches the surface of what the game is truly about.It is a bit like announcing the only wine worth drinking is the stuff they pour (or used to) in Paris’s fancier restaurants. If, on the other hand, you hail from a small southern...
We know our time in English rugby’s second tier will be tough, with Ealing and the rest preparing to take down a big nameWhen the referee, Mike Hudson, called time at the end of Coventry’s victory over Doncaster Knights at Castle Park on Saturday 14 March, none of us knew that 358 days would pass before the next competitive game was played in the Greene King IPA Championship. It’s been a long, and frustrating, wait for players and fans, but the new season finally kicks off this weekend with my own club, Saracens, joining the league for the first time.English rugby’s second-tier clubs will be excited at the prospect of denting the ambition of the three-time European champions and welcoming...
Brentford have a new home and must bounce back, as must Forest, while grudge rivalries await in Leagues One and TwoWith the transfer window open until 5 October, players primed for a move to the Premier League can give their clubs a leg-up in the opening weeks of the season. Bournemouth have so far retained Callum Wilson and Joshua King, while Norwich can still call on Ben Godfrey, Max Aarons, Todd Cantwell and Jamal Lewis. Watford, too, could start life in the Championship with Ismaïla Sarr and Gerard Deulofeu. Ivan Toney’s switch to Brentford feels significant in terms of a possible domino effect but Ollie Watkins and Saïd Benrahma, both of whom are valued at around £25m, are in full...
The pragmatism of Scott Parker’s Fulham triumphed over the doomed idealism of Thomas Frank’s Brentford in a game that failed to live up to the billingAnd so, ultimately, it all came down to this. A full year of toil; 120 minutes of grim application, in many cases a lifetime of longing. A free-kick in a seemingly innocuous position on the left wing. A defence maintaining an audaciously high line, a goalkeeper anxiously patrolling the space behind it and a left-back who spied an irresistible opportunity to write himself into folklore.That, ultimately, was all it took to send Fulham back to the Premier League and leave Brentford in the Championship for another season. On one level, it felt unspeakably senseless for...