#2: Ealing Trailfinders: Champions in Limbo
Plus a word about the excellent coverage of the Women's Six Nations. And Leinster's dominant performance.
Happy Monday all. Welcome back to my weekly rugby newsletter. Today, we take a little look at Ealing’s Championship success; the excellent improvement of women’s rugby coverage; and Leinster’s dominant defeat of Munster. Happy reading, and if you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe for free!
Champions in Limbo
After their 60-10 win over Richmond, another of their many games this season in which they’ve run rampant, Ealing Trailfinders were crowned champions. The Championship has been frenetic, exciting, and full of twists and turns. The men from West London were, understandably, the consensus favourite to clinch the top spot this season, but their path was not made easy by the rest of the league.
The eventual Champions were heavily pressured by Cornish Pirates in their second game of the season, and were beaten 15-12. In late November, Ealing travelled to Armthorpe Road to face Doncaster Knights. Despite a five-match winning streak in which they scored an incredible 337 points, Ealing were handed their second loss of the season at the hands of the Knights. Doncaster then backed that win up in February, stunning Ealing at home as Bill McBryde’s intercept try late in the game quelled a surging Trailfinders team.
Before that February loss to the Knights came possibly the most incredible moment of The Championship campaign as Bedford Blues paid a visit to West London. Whilst no one was quick to write off the visitors, not many were expecting the underdogs to deliver the performance they did, especially after Ealing scored 50 points against the Blues away from home earlier in the season. The Blues stunned the eventual Champions at their home with three tries in the second half, turning a close game into a 19-31 win for Bedford and giving Doncaster an edge in the league.
I may have just outlined Ealing’s four losses, and they may have won one less match than Doncaster did, but Ealing’s ruthlessness in attack was vital to overcoming those setbacks. Out of 20 games played, they scored 15 try bonus points, which considering they pipped Doncaster to the title by three points, shows you how important it is to take maximum points at every opportunity.
Unfortunately, there seems to be little reward beyond silverware and pride currently. The promotion discussion is murky. As it stands, no team in The Championship is technically eligible for promotion since no team has a stadium with over 10,000 seats - the main facet of the RFU’s ‘minimum standards criteria'.
And so, the likes of Ealing and Doncaster, and the league as a whole, sit in limbo. Far from a professional league attracting the eyes of investors. Edging ever closer to an ‘A’ League for the Premiership clubs. In fact, development is already becoming the main goal of the majority of the clubs. Speaking to The Telegraph, Nottingham’s Andy Kyriacou said:
“We wanted to win as many games as we could for Nottingham, but we also wanted to quantify success a little bit differently. We wanted to see how many players we could get into the Premiership, into the Pro 14 or into France. Could we develop our players to move on? If we did that, we were going to have better players playing for us at the weekend.”
In a perfect world, The Championship would be akin to France’s Pro D2. A fully professional second tier where those who are promoted stand a reasonable chance at competing in the top league. A big factor in France’s second tier being professional is the fact the LNR runs both the Top 14 and the Pro D2. In England the PRL handles the Premiership, whereas the RFU retains control of The Champ.
The Championship is an excellent breeding ground for players of tomorrow, that is an undeniable fact. But the league and clubs deserve more than to be branded as glorified feeder clubs for the Premiership teams.
Coverage is Queen
I think, aside from some of the highly enjoyable and entertaining rugby being showcased in the Women’s Six Nations, the most incredible part is the level of coverage the tournament has received thus far.
Open up the Rugby Union section of BBC Sport right now and your screen is flooded with women’s rugby content, and it is brilliant. Fans might put the onus of improving the sport’s popularity on the clubs themselves, or the RFU or any equivalent union, but media coverage is arguably the most important aspect. When the BBC or the Guardian commit valuable space on their websites to women’s rugby, it gives the tournament and the players a much deserved legitimacy. The audience is there, as evidenced by Wales’ victory against Scotland in Round Two being watched by 4,875, a new benchmark for a standalone women's rugby international in Wales. A number that is only going to grow as coverage and investment of the game grows.
It matters when fans don’t merely support the men’s team and give as much support to the women. It matters that people watch a documentary as emotionally charged and as brutally honest as No Women No Try. It matters when newspapers take what would be considered a big risk a short time ago, and put women’s rugby on the front page - no matter their circulation.
Whilst the men’s game is inundated with fiery discussions of red cards and forever-mutating laws, the women’s game is one of the fastest growing sports in the UK - still at a fledging level in its development but finally beginning to receive the sort of coverage it deserves.
A Megalodon in a Shark Tank.
What has already been said about Leinster that hasn’t already been written about in the sheer amount of column inches devoted to them? For the sake of comparison, they are the Manchester City of the URC. You may hate them. You may dislike how they built their team. But you have no choice but to watch and be in awe of the sheer quality of their squad. The quality of their play. Slick and precise in attack, warmongering in defence.
No team has come away with a win at Thomond Park this season. Leinster not only came away with the win, but with the bonus point to boot. Their level of aggression and physicality was on a completely different planet to Munster’s. And their ability to exploit the space that their physicality creates is otherworldly.
Leinster’s aggression borders on violence. On another day, with potentially a different referee, they may have been called out for all manner of ruck infringements and illegalities. TRK put it best in one of his tweets last night - “he (The referee, Christophe Ridley) showed us where the line was and we didn't seem to want to go there.” That was one of the fundamental differences between the sides. Leinster do not care. If they think they can get away with something, they will do it. They will crash into you at the breakdown with little regard for your safety, and if the referee doesn’t ping them for it, well, they’ll do it again and again.
In the above clip, Devin Toner enters the ruck from the side, clearing out Gavin Coombes and leaving him to limp off the pitch. The referee subsequently awards a penalty to Leinster. Everyone knows you play to the whistle, and if the whistle never comes, then you keep on smashing. That is no justification for Toner’s clear out, or a justification for the cynical actions of any other player, but Leinster have no problem being violent when they need to be. If you want to match them, then you need to be just as violent.
Leinster’s militancy aside, they are extremely sharp with the ball in hand, and evidently supremely well coached by Leo Cullen and his staff. Their instinct and precision with their backline moves is stellar, with James Lowe and Jimmy O’Brien equally adept at popping up in midfield alongside Garry Ringrose, all of which was orchestrated by a masterful Ross Byrne.
In years prior, Leinster’s dominance was blamed by outsiders as being the result of being a big fish in a small pond. A ‘farmers league’ as football Twitter would label it. Its a ludicrous statement of course, especially with the injection of quality from the South African sides. The URC is no small pond. It is a shark tank. Leinster just happen to be a Megalodon.