Leeds

You are right to correct me Billesleyexile with 3 minutes to go it was Cambridge that were down. It was a nail biter all around with the final relegation spot not determined until the final whistle. However despite our defeat I very much enjoyed our visit to Billesley Common and the very impressive facilities. 

For me it reinforced my pride in how far such a small club playing on an open field and with a wooden shack for a clubhouse have come.

I have been away from rugby since the end of the season and I wasn't aware of Caldy's PSF programme but subject to Mrs Bolognese's permission I will be attending

I think the key point is that clubs that try to manipulate the rugby to make the money work are always in a worse place than those who try to manipulate the money to make the rugby work, if you see what I mean.

If money is the core of what you do as a club, that is what comes to define the club. It's easy to tell the difference between a XV that represents a business model and a XV that represents a club spirit. 

I read something somewhere - The Times I think - an opinion that the Championship is full of "teams", but not many "clubs". I suspect that is true, but whether or not it is true, the RFU should ask what it wants the Champ to be for.

If it wants to use it as a feeder league for the Premiership and thus for England, it ought to be set up as a franchise system where each Premiership side is mirrored by/ partnered with a Championship "team" where a majority of EQPs, especially young ones, are mixed with more experienced non-EQPs who guaranteed a level of quality that made it an improving environment for the Prem/England set-ups to bring promising players on at the right pace.

But if the RFU wants the Championship to be the tip of the "grass roots", i.e. the best that club rugby can be, operating in a sustainable manner where "clubs" compete and crucially operate as "clubs", in order to foster and replicate the values of the game among players from 6 to 60, of both sexes and all standards, then that league needs to be different. It needs to be composed of financially sustainable clubs that embody "community rugby" - a much abused phrase which ought to just mean playing for the sake of the players and the members/supporters. Thus, it should be funded centrally only as far as it allows non-professional ("semi-professional" is such as sham phrase) clubs to operate in such a way that those clubs can provide the highest possible support to all players in terms of medical, training, coaching at all levels. Professional amateurism, if you like.

Now, it seems that the RFU is not willing or able to subsidise anything beyond that anyway - the bulk of the £550K that comes from Twickenham is ringfenced for eg insurance, medical support, the employment of certain designated officials etc, so that is NOT what pays for professional players.

So the choice is simple: clubs or teams. Should the Championship be all clubs on a Caldy model, or all teams on a different model (e.g. Carnegie)? The current Championship is more like the latter and I doubt it pleases anyone, not least because the EQP and dual-registration system are clearly both not quite working as intended (viz. Hartpury in the case of DR). A number of other clubs than Carnegie have come close to the hairy edge recently, some in public (Jersey) and some not. But you'll look long and hard for a really profitable business in next season's Championship (apologies to Blues fans, but if you check the accounts on Companies House, and you can read a balance sheet and know where to look in the notes, you will know what I mean by "really").

In the end, everyone agrees what we have isn't what we need. Given that there are signs of England and the RFU losing the plot financially at the highest level, it is even more imperative to get things right at Tier 2. So make up your flaming minds, RFU: go full "teams", fund it correctly, sort out a mirroring system with rigid and severe EQP/DR rules; or go full "clubs", fund it for professional amateurism and let the clubs who can create sustainable, community-based business models be the ones to create the best teams within themselves. (and I think the RFU should also make a greater contribution to clubs coming from less populous and less rugby-union-strong areas, but that's an argument for another day).

Rant over.

WWWE

I renewed my season ticket for Cambridge before we went to Sale. 

As everyone knows for 75+ minutes that day we were down.

The relief was palpable.

But had the worst happen I would still have been back.

Posts like yours Stalwart make me more optimistic.............perhaps rugby may just hold onto its soul