Ealing Trailfinders Times - Winter 2018

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BEST XV - ALUN WALKER Hooker Alun Walker joined the club in the 2014/15 season and has made over 80 appearances for Ealing Trailfinders. During those four years he has taken to the pitch with around 120 players, and below he has listed his best starting XV from that time! 1 WILL DAVIS I lived with him for a year and all I can say is good luck to his Mrs. He isn’t the cleanest bloke in the world but he's very good at scrummaging! 9 LUKE CARTER He's my new car club buddy this season. Pound for pound he reckons he’s the strongest player in the club. He’s played in pretty much every league there is to play in, and on the pitch he is very vocal to us forwards which is what you want. 2 3 KARL GIBSON NATHAN BUCK The nicest bloke on earth who had the gift of the gab and made me feel like part of the family down here when I first arrived. A club legend who has the strongest Geordie accent ever after a couple of drinks A typical Welshman who was a great laugh. He was part of Car Club and he bought the doughnuts so that puts him in automatically. Simply a great presence around the club. 10 11 AARON PENBERTHY PHIL CHESTERS One hell of a boot on him! He made the Sport Bible last year for an unbelievable bit of skill when he flicked the ball up from behind him and kicked a drop goal which was quite something! Quite simply an absolute try machine. He scored for fun, particularly in the first few years I was here. He couldn’t tackle but was unbelievably quick and was an out and out finisher. 4 KIERAN MURPHY He cried to be in this time so I had to put him in. Another top player and the team are always better with him involved. 12 TOM WHEATCROFT A brilliant story teller and a superb attacker. The worst flatulence in world rugby but he had a hell of a pass on him which could cut open any defence. 5 HARRY CASSON Talks like a proper Bristolian who loves his garden and chickens so there’s always a few entertaining stories for our car journeys. He loves a sleep in the car but when he’s awake he isn’t a bad bloke. 13 ALED JENKINS A quiet bloke but he had some great one-liners in the changing rooms. Scored the best try I’ve been involved in against Bedford which was incredible, a Conrad Smith-esque centre. 6 RAYN SMID He wants to be Victor Matfield deep down. He joined half way through a season and fitted in straight away which is a credit to him. He looks after my dog and is a great dog sitter as sell as a good presence in car club. 14 CHRIS KINLOCH A musician at heart. My fellow Scot down here in London who was great on the guitar. As a player he ran hard and straight over the top of people, and as soon as the game finished he loved an impromptu night out. 7 ARTHUR ELLIS He came across as miserable but I did love his humour. He could cover every position, I’m sure he played hooker, backrow and centre for us. For a forward he had a very cultured boot on him. 15 WILL HARRIES He’s been at the club for the whole time that I’ve been here. He has great feet and is very proud of his rig, but he needs to work on his hair and his Budgee Smugglers. 8 MARK BRIGHT The Skipper who led from the front every week. A brilliant leader and I've never heard a bad word said about him. The oldest player I’ve ever played with who recently celebrated his 40th birthday. A pretty interesting rats tail hair cut! FAVOURITE MATCH: British & Irish Cup Final without a doubt. It was the end of a long journey as a group and to end the season with silverware was such a good feeling! 28 | WINTER 2018 | OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF EALING TRAILFINDERS
F or pretty much as long as I can remember, the Greene King IPA Championship has stood at a crossroads. Whether it was the old 16-team First Division Rugby or the current 12-club version, nobody has ever quite defined its purpose or known what to do with it. Since the RFU revamped the league structure and created the Championship in 2009, we’ve had eight-team play-offs, four-team play-offs, relegation play-offs and now one-up, one-down. Meanwhile, we’ve seen London Welsh go bust and a number of others struggling financially. Many years ago, in the early Noughties when the Premiership ringfencing debate had its first serious airing, someone (I can’t remember who) famously likened what was then known as National League One to Istanbul – where East meet West and ideologies collide. It was a terrific analogy because the Championship is neither fully professional throughout like the Premiership nor fully semiprofessional like the league below. Instead, it as amalgam of disparate clubs operating as best they can with no clear, collective vision of the future. Some – Ealing Trailfinders and London Irish amongst them – are aiming for promotion, while others like Coventry and Yorkshire Carnegie and Cornish Pirates have vague plans around one day ascending to the topflight but currently have neither the stadia nor teams to achieve that. Then you have Bedford, a club and town that could potentially support Premiership rugby but happy to be the thirteenth or fourteenth best team in the country. After the club nearly went to the wall in the late Nineties, it’s entirely understandable they will not risk a repeat. There is another tranche of clubs – London Scottish, Richmond and Hartpury amongst them – who are happy to be in the Championship but cannot seriously entertain topflight rugby, at least not unless they discovered a benefactor with the wherewithal to make it happen. In the meantime, everyone is desperately trying to cling on whilst doing the best they can with the resources they have available, while the infinitely wealthier Premiership clubs sail away into the distance and the gap between our top two tiers continues to widen. As the ring-fencing debate grows louder and with Premiership Rugby currently in key talks over potential outside investment that could potentially transport their finances into the stratosphere, these are critical times for the Championship if the door is to remain open. So, what needs to happen? Personally, I believe a route must exist from the lower leagues to the Premiership. However, I also understand all the arguments from Premiership clubs around the risks associated with relegation and a problem the Championship must address involves closing a credibility gap. Putting it bluntly, the Premiership clubs don’t rate the Championship. Yes, they’ll recruit players from the league and use it as a tool for developing dual-registered players, but most top-flight chief executives would rather tear their own eyes out than be a part of it. That attitude needs changing and the only way it will is if the Championship joins forces with Premiership Rugby, comes under its control and is developed into a league of fulltime clubs who share the common ambition of building sides to move into the top-flight. It happens in France, where the Top 14 and Pro D2 are both run by umbrella body Ligue Nationale de Rugby and it is a wildly successful competition where the second tier is adequately funded, takes a proper slice of the television money cake and attracts significant crowds. Rather than the current 12-team Championship here, I’d have an eightteam Premiership Two to start with that consists solely of clubs with the GUEST COLUMNIST NEALE HARVEY IS AN AWARD-WINNING WRITER FOR THE WEEKLY RUGBY PAPER THE PRESS BOX ambition to reach the top-flight, meet the criteria, operate full-time squads and are then capable of managing the step-up. Instead of filling the Championship schedule with cup competitions that few people have any genuine interest in, eight ambitious teams could play home and away twice to create a competitive 28-game fixture list which would concentrate on quality over quantity. Any side from the 16-team National League One below that would need to prove they had the ambition and wherewithal to aspire to the Premiership if they wanted to join the second tier, while National One would be the pinnacle of the community game. I’d also look at an expansion system. There’s no reason why the Premiership has to stop at 12 clubs or the Championship at eight and if you’re developing competitions at the right pace, the television deals would follow and you could entertain more professional clubs. What the Championship cannot afford to do, though, is nothing. It’s a good league – I know that because I’m one of the few national rugby reporters who actually takes an interest – but it needs to be excellent and if it continues drifting, the ring-fencers will win. OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF EALING TRAILFINDERS | WINTER 2018 | 29
Page 1 and 2: FEATURE NAME O F F I C I A L M A G
Page 3 and 4: EDITOR’S WELCOME WELCOME SHAPLEY
Page 5 and 6: NATIONAL COACHES VISIT ENGLAND COAC
Page 7 and 8: BEHIND THE SCENES BEHIND THE TEAM J
Page 9 and 10: GUY ARMITAGE you take a step back i
Page 11 and 12: EASYCOPIERS IMPROVE PRODUCTIVITY Pr
Page 13 and 14: OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF EALING TRAILFI
Page 15 and 16: TITLE CHALLENGE over for his second
Page 17 and 18: 'TIS THE SEASON OF RUGBY “THE ATM
Page 19 and 20: WHAT'S HAPPENING? WHAT’S HAPPENIN
Page 21 and 22: IN THE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS SPORTS DEL
Page 23 and 24: IN THE COMMUNITY DANNY HARLOW ON WH
Page 25 and 26: RUGBY CULTURE BEN LANDRY The 27-yea
Page 27: half, Cleve now were 15 points behi
Page 31 and 32: JORDY REID CHATS TO VISITORS IN THE

Ealing Trailfinders Times - Winter 2018

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