League fixtures confirmed pending rugby restart date

[Phil]

While there is no official date for when community competitions will restart, the RFU have announced league conferences and fixtures for the Adult Male (English Club Championship Level 3 to 12) for the 2020-21 season.

Link

[Communications Team]

Birmingham Moseley (Provisional) fixtures now on the club website

Click here to view

[dag]

Glad that Rams are first up for the slaughter - hopefully them not Moseley - so will be rooting for a win considering they did the double over us last season. I wonder if they still plan to have a committee meeting before each line-out.

[dingle]

First training session started with the downpour! However, all was good soon after with glorious conditions.  Let's get the season started!

More photos here

[dag]

Great day Saturday and lovely to talk to some of the players. I also liked the steel drum player entertaining us all after training - players not us supporters - and hope we can enjoy his music again.

[grooveavenue]

Great pix.

Now we know it's really happened. AJ in BMRC badged training gear and all back in training!

[kingsheathlad]

NCA site says level 3 will not start in September. No surprise there. Fixtures to be altered.

[Communications Team]

National League Rugby not set for September start

As a reminder the return to rugby road-map is reproduced below.

Based on the RFU season model for level 3&4 to achieve playing window 1 games need to start prior to 3rd October to have a full 30 game season.

If it is deemed fixtures will not start by 3rd October then we move into playing window 2 - Full round of 15 home or away fixtures, then league splits into 2 groups of 8 based on league position and play each other home or away in the groups making a 22 game season.

As soon as we receive clarity from the RFU we will update fixtures as appropriate. 

[Oddsox]

Do we know if any further news on start dates?

I am unclear how/why Premiership can be playing & the rest not.

Surely at a lower (smaller) level it is easier for us to organise social distancing & safe measures.

All well & good watching this top level european stuff, but it's not Mose is it?

Cum on U Mose (& soon)

[owain]

Sept 20, 2020 18:47:57 GMT Oddsox said:

Do we know if any further news on start dates?

I am unclear how/why Premiership can be playing & the rest not.

No news on start dates, although the league are rumoured to be pushing to move to stage E next month with a hope of starting in November, although announcements later this week may make that impossible.

The reason the Premiership are playing is due to the £10,000+ per week each team is spending on private Covid testing, as the TV funding is worth far more than that so fixtures need to be fulfilled. Note that still not all Premiership games have fans yet, that's still being trialled.

[southernmose]

Sept 21, 2020 6:45:06 GMT owain said:

Sept 20, 2020 18:47:57 GMT Oddsox said:

Do we know if any further news on start dates?

I am unclear how/why Premiership can be playing & the rest not.

No news on start dates, although the league are rumoured to be pushing to move to stage E next month with a hope of starting in November, although announcements later this week may make that impossible.

The reason the Premiership are playing is due to the £10,000+ per week each team is spending on private Covid testing, as the TV funding is worth far more than that so fixtures need to be fulfilled. Note that still not all Premiership games have fans yet, that's still being trialled.

Alongside the cost of testing there's also the cost of maintaining proper isolation between matches. AIUI super league is trying to finish its season on more of a shoestring than the Prem, and is hitting loads of +ve tests and all sorts of problems. 

Essentially, the way I see it, if you can afford a couple of tests per player per week, and to isolate them from everything when they're not on the pitch, then it can be done. £10,000 per club per week is conservative too, AIUI. I've seen double that mentioned somewhere.

But taking the £10k per club per week as the baseline, if we're going to play 30 matches that's £300,000k additional costs. 

The Prem are playing because the club owners are shouldering it - and that's just to test their players, never mind the hit taken from basically playing behind closed doors. It's all for the TV funding.

[grooveavenue]

To me, a major significance re Premiership is the fact that they are full time players who attend Covid test work places do their training and play matches and are then able to run their lives outside rugby to meet the requirements of club protocols and their own safety.

A high percentage of Championship players are not full-time; Nat 1 etc are not full time and usually have a job to earn. If we read the player profiles currently appearing on the Club pages we'll see the range of work/careers players are involved in. Many players will be mixing with the general population as part of their job so are totally unable to separate themselves to ensure better protection for all around them and within the rugby clubs.

Covid testing is only as good as the test i.e. today negative, tomorrow positive, as some full time football and rugby and other sports teams have found despite very regular testing.

To be honest mines a guess; the experts have The Knowledge.

[grooveavenue]

.............of course we know and will know further at 8pm tonight when Bozza makes the announcements (that should have been made 3 weeks ago!) on TV.

[ale]

SoundS to me like we can kiss goodbye to our 2020/1 season

[southernmose]

Sept 22, 2020 11:49:24 GMT ale said:

SoundS to me like we can kiss goodbye to our 2020/1 season

as long as we're still standing for 2021-22.

(I suspect that sadly some clubs won't be)

In my fevered dreams/nightmares I wonder if rugby when it restarts isn't going to look more like 1945/6 than 2019/21 - local scratch fixtures against anyone broadly the same standard who can raise a team.

the gofundme page is that way <------------

[owain]

Sept 22, 2020 11:49:24 GMT ale said:

SoundS to me like we can kiss goodbye to our 2020/1 season

In the absence of a widely available vaccine, this does sadly seem to be the case. For want of a proper short-term lockdown it seems we have mortgaged our medium term future

[Oddsox]

Can we bleat about lack of support/ funding from RFU or is that unfair on this occasion?

Cum on U Mose!

[southernmose]

The RFU have just released a statement that they’re now seeking government financial support....

[kingsheathlad]

Not good, let's hope something positive to hear next Spring. Stay safe and keep one's chin up.