Coventry 34 Ealing Trailfinders 32 - there once was a team from Ealing...

This is the moment we’ll remember

Every day for the rest of our lives

Time may rush us hurt or love us

But on this day we have arrived

It’s been a long time coming

We’ve been in the running for so long

But now we’re on our way

Let the ride just take us

You’re a winner

I’m a winner

This is all happening so fast

Winner - Pet Shop Boys

Chairman Jon Sharp celebrating after the win against Ealing

'A fine group of players from Ealing,

Left all the teams they met reeling,

But when Coventry appeared

It was just as they feared

And they learned how the others were feeling...'

Ealing have the strongest squad in the Championship, a side bought for one purpose only, to secure Premiership rugby.

It's a squad packed with quality, bankrolled by the club's owner, Mike Gooley, and full of players with experience of playing at the highest club level and beyond.

By rights, Ealing should have played Premiership rugby by now, but with the RFU's tendency to move the goalposts when it suits them to ensure the top tier is all but ringfenced, they have yet to achieve a place amongst the elite of English rugby.

The club deserves that chance and I genuinely hope that any nonsense about failing to meet the minimum standards criteria based on capacity (among other factors) is sidelined this year to allow Ealing its rightful place in the Premiership next season.

I have no problem with Mike Gooley's approach to achieving success thus far.

I'm not sure, ultimately, that it's a sustainable one, especially should Ealing be promoted, but what Trailfinders has achieved through his support is to be lauded.

How would Cov have fared without Jon Sharp's financial input?

Short answer - they wouldn't have got close to where we currently are.

To make a case against Gooley's generosity would simply be hypocritical.

Trailfinders seems to amass a squad each year in order to win the league - if a squad isn't good enough the one year, there are wholesale changes the next to ensure that it will be for the following campaign.

There appears to be far less emphasis there on building a squad over a number of years, with players coming through an in-house Academy or bringing in talented youngsters to work with top coaches to create continuity and a squad that grows together.

Which is very much the Coventry approach.

Whilst Ealing's plans seem more short to medium term, Coventry's are definitely medium to long and yesterday gave us a real taster of what we can expect in the next couple of seasons should Alex Rae manage to keep most of this current group of players together.

Ealing had the better squad, certainly in terms of depth, but Cov had the better team and in the end the win was about effort, commitment and self-belief as much as it was about pure ability. Cov deserved the win because not only were they the better organised and better prepared side, they also played as team and in the final quarter that was really evident, as it was from the players' celebrations on the final whistle.

Ealing had virtually a full squad available but Coventry were short of Anstley, Chilvers and Hitchcock (all are on loan in some form or another from Ealing), whilst Titherington appears to be leaving, or has already left, for foreign fields. And that's before any fitness issues came into play.

Add to that the loss of Will Rigg and, on paper, Cov were very much up against it.

But sometimes the correlation between the theory and reality is nowhere near as marked as you might expect. Yesterday was a case in point.

Whereas in recent years Ealing have been reliant on bringing in some big names to buy quick success, Cov has recruited far more judiciously, with players like Pellegrini (Sevenoaks), Wand (Cambridge), Salt (Cadiff Met), Trinder (Saints Academy), Poole (10 caps Exeter), Wilson (Worcs U18s Academy), Nkwacha (Saracens Academy), Betteridge (Cov Academy), Ball (Cov Academy), Martin (Cov Academy), Mitchell (Cov Academy) all coming to the club at a young age at relatively little cost (or none at all), and developing as players under the tutelage of Alex Rae and co.

On top of that, Rae has been prepared to take on proven players who are returning from potentially career threatening injuries, players like Hutler, Tyas and most recently Venner. It's a risk, but look at the impact James Tyas has had both on and off the pitch and you can see why the club are prepared to go down this path - again it's a cost-effective way of strengthening the club.

Growing together as a squad, as a team and as individuals must strengthen the bond between them and with the club's focus on the local community and working within it, then the players will have far more of a connection with, and understanding of, exactly what it is that makes the club so special.

All the players seem to have roles outside of just rugby and that ensures a connection with supporters, with schools and colleges and with the city and beyond. If that loyalty to the very ethos on which the club is built is carefully nurtured by the chairman, the board, the coaches and management, which I believe it is, then I maintain that there is always going to be an allegiance to Cov well beyond that which most Ealing players might have to their club.

And that matters.

It matters because when the chips are down and you're trailing in what for some was the biggest league game of their young careers, then that extra fight, that extra passion for what you believe in and for those whom you have worked so hard over the last two or three seasons, then that gives you an edge, surely?

Maybe not THE edge, but an edge nevertheless...

That's what I believe we saw yesterday.

Of course, Cov has also brought in Kvesic and Chudley (Worcester), as well as Adam Nicol (Jersey and Glasgow), but these players aren't journeymen looking for a lucrative end to a successful career. No, they've all bought into the Coventry way and understand the responsibility they have in bringing on some of the youngsters playing alongside them. All three have spoken articulately about how much they've enjoyed being at Cov not just because it's a chance to continue playing rugby, but because of everything it stands for.

Whereas Ealing aren't going to progress greatly in the next couple of seasons without a pretty hefty injection of new players given so many are already so experienced, the same isn't true of Coventry. Yes, we'll see movement of players both in and out (especially as the bigger clubs eye Coventry's success and hope to find themselves a star of the future without the price tag to match), but many of the players who were on show yesterday are some way off reaching their full potential as yet, so hopefully the kind of performance we saw yesterday will become the norm further down the line.

Tom Ball, for instance, is still only 22 but is fast approaching 60 games for the club...

There's no doubt that the Academy has had its part to play in the success of Coventry over the past couple of seasons. Created as part of Rowland Winter's roadmap for the club, it has been further developed under the current set up and yesterday 5 of the match day squad have come through the initiative - Ball, Martin, Betteridge, Mitchell and Opoku.

Ollie Betteridge is a great example of just how successful Cov are at bringing on youngsters. On the face of it, Betteridge against former England and Leicester legend Billy Twelvetrees was something of a mismatch. For goodness' sake, Ollie is only the second/third choice 12 at the club, behind initially Rigg and then Hitchcock. However, the lad did a fantastic job defensively with the Ealing offence getting little change out of him and he even had the temerity to score Cov's opening try after a great offload from Wand saw him break clear unopposed after hitting a perfect line.

I think that try for me epitomised the different approaches to recruitment between the two sides.

And I know which one gives the greater satisfaction to me as a supporter...

Fair play to Ealing's Ben Ward who was generous in defeat, praising Coventry and acknowledging the pressure Cov put his side under.

Watching Ealing score 6 tries and lose must have really hurt. I'm not sure that even the most optimistic of Cov supporters would have predicted a win had they been told in advance Ealing would cross the line 6 times, but such is the resilience of this Cov squad these days, I guess I'll need to be a little more upbeat in future encounters.

Before the game, I certainly wasn't predicting a win and would have settled for a strong performance from the home side with a bonus point being the icing on the cake.

Ward's post-match huddle was interesting in that he had them together for a while and actually said very little, spending a good minute in silence looking across at the Coventry lads as Rae spoke to them.

AR's approach was obviously very different Whilst he spoke, and he looked fairly animated from where we were, he was thumping his chest and clearly talking about the pride he had in his players and the heart they had shown to come back from behind on at three separate occasions.

On many occasions we've seen Cov race into a commanding early lead, only to see it whittled away in the second half, so for Cov to find themselves 10 points down in just 5 minutes and show the strength of character to comeback the way they did speaks volumes about the players' mentality and inward belief, especially against opposition of this quality.

Ealing had managed to silence what had been an expectant crowd before kick-off and another score could have really hurt Cov. But this is a side with great character.

And indeed great characters.

None more so than Jordan Poole. He really appears to enjoy the role of captain and if anything, it seems to have helped improve his game which isn't always the case. Players looked to him for leadership and he was at the forefront of every decision made out on the pitch. At times he was also willing to consult with his senior players to ensure the right decision was being made, always prepared to take advice but taking responsibility for the tough calls.

It was one of the best all-round performances from a Cov player that I've seen for a while (even after Adam Nicol's stellar performance against Doncaster the week before) and with Trinder and Nicol packing down alongside him, the front row is beginning to look formidable. Goodrick-Clark, Cornish and Alo are a very large, experienced and combative front row but it was a pretty even contest with Cov arguably getting the better of them in the end.

And with Salt and Nairau coming on, Cov still looked reasonably comfortable. It was also good to see Ma'asi back in the squad, even if it was initially to replace Nayalo in the back row. He's such a versatile player, Rae can afford to do that and when the luckless Biggs got injured within a couple of minutes of coming on, Ma'asi was able to return to his usual position of hooker. His inclusion in the squad should take a bit of the pressure off Poole who has played more than he might have expected this season, the result of lengthy injuries to both Ma'asi and Biggs.

There's been some focus on Pellegrini's problems from the tee in recent games and again yesterday he missed a couple of good chances to put the game a little further out of Ealing's reach. He was hobbling for much of the second half before he went off which might explain his form with the boot, but Cov were fortunate to be able to turn to Tobi Wilson to secure the final 3 points that in the end were just enough to secure the win.

PP has such an important part to play in this side and in its future success and to keep him at the BPA next season would be a massive statement of intent as there's bound to be a lot of interest in Pellegrini simply as an attacking fly-half. That said, we do need to have a reliable kicker in the side too. If Wilson is consistent enough to fulfil that role, then that would be a real bonus, if not, then maybe that's an area the coaches will look to strengthen next season. But PP is another talisman, mercurial as he is unpredictable, with the ability to unlock tight defences that sets him apart from any other 10 in this league.

---

Even though Billy Twelvetrees had an opportunity to win the game for Ealing with that final conversion from the corner, it would have been an injustice to have lost the game in the end (I also thought the penalty awarded after that try, close to half way, and pretty much in front of the posts, was probably within his range?).

Yesterday, Cov showed what a strong side they are, both physically and mentally. They took the game to Ealing and matched their physicality and when taken to the wire, Ealing didn't seem to have the answers. In the Championship, not many teams will front up like Cov did and we exposed some of the weaknesses that underly a squad of players who might be hugely talented as individuals, yet don't appear to have the same togetherness to the degree that Cov does.

Cov's performance has to be the marker now by which all others are compared. The result shows what this set of players is capable of and whilst there will be games in which we don't reach such high standards, the players know for sure that if they do get it right on the day, then there isn't a side in the league who can match them.

Heck of a confidence booster, that.

---

It’s been a long time coming

We’ve been in the running for so long

But now we’re on our way

Let the ride just take us

You’re a winner

I’m a winner