Coventry Rugby Club's 150th anniversary

To labour a point from my previous posts, last weekend saw me too heading on a train to a midlands city to watch a sporting event, albeit a different sport and a different city.

In the last few years, Coventry Rugby Club, under the energetic leadership of Chairman Jon Sharp, has been undergoing something of a renaissance after three decades of decline punctuated by crisis that on more than one occasion threatened to put the club out of business altogether.

The problem they face in any attempt to get back to the top of English rugby is the obstacles put in the way by the RFU and Premiership Rugby in terms of massive disparities of funding between the two leagues, unequal financial arrangements for any club that does go up, restrictive ground criteria and ever-changing rules about who is promoted. 

This cartel approach appears to continue despite the contraction of top level rugby to just 10 clubs after the collapse of Worcester, Wasps and London Irish. It seems a strange approach for a governing body to put every barrier in the way of a sport's expansion as a spectator attraction and effectively to insist that fully professional rugby should only take place at five venues in England each weekend, but there you go.

This year Coventry celebrate their 150th anniversary and doing so positively. Rather than lament the fact that the central funding has been slashed by the rugby authorities in recent years, Cov have set out their own route to sustainable professional rugby with an ambitious statement by the Chairman about the club's future, launch of a fundraising campaign to widen access to sport in the city and the rather moving video (link above) which includes footage of past club achievements and historic images of the city. The club has also taken a leading role in ensuring Championship clubs are increasingly speaking up for themselves rather than suffering in silence.

I was one of 3,417 spectators watching Cov's impressive win over Doncaster Knights on Saturday. It is more fun now being a Cov supporter than it has been for an awful long time. But more than that I hope this may be the start of clubs below the Premiership shaping their own future.