The RFU - you really don't have to take this crap as the walls come tumbling down

I know we've always been taught to rely Upon those in authority - But you never know until you try How things just might be - If we came together so strongly

Are you gonna try to make this work Or spend your days down in the dirt You see things can change - YES an' walls can come tumbling down!

Governments crack and systems fall

Cause unity is powerful

Lights go out- the wall come tumbling down

Walls Come Tumbling Down - The Style Council

So after what has seemed an interminably long wait, at long last we now have the Championship fixture list for the coming season.

In fairness to the RFU, and there are going to be very few occasions elsewhere in this post that I'll be able to write that, the release date is actually pretty much in line with previous seasons. It's just that with all the uncertainty and skepticism that currently surrounds any decision made by the RFU that concerns the Championship, it always felt that the process was far more drawn out this season.

And what a start to the season for Coventry! An away fixture at champions Jersey. You could argue that there's no better time to take them on; first game in and before they've had time to build up any sort of momentum or hit the kind of form that saw them so dominant over so much of the last season. The same is true of Coventry of course, but with confidence surely as high as it's been since our return to Tier Two, and with the added belief that we can beat any side on our travels following the unexpected but fully deserved win down at Ealing back in January, well I'd certainly take the trip across the channel for our first game.

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And here are the highlights of that memorable win over Ealing - important not just because it blew the Championship race wide open after Ealing appeared to have regained their composure following their shock defeat against Caldy back in January, but also because it proved that Coventry now had a squad capable of mounting a serious challenge to the top two.

Whether this remains the case in the light of the loss of several key players back in May vs the recruitment of a mix of seasoned professionals and talented youngsters this season is one of the most intriguing aspects of the opening few games of this new campaign.

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Such is the interest in Coventry Rugby at the moment within the Smith family, not only is Josh hopping across to the Stade Santander International (his first visit there), but so are Holly, Sam, Susie, Josh and Dom.

If I can somehow get Charlie over her fear of flying, it could be a full house next year with Jessica and the twins in tow, too!

It will be one of many tough encounters for Cov over the next few months, but however hard the on-field contests might prove to be, the inter-Championship battles pale in significance compared to the intra-Union struggle that is about to break out between the respective administrative leaderships of the Championship and the RFU.

With the appointment of the combative Simon Halliday as the new Chair of the Championship at last Thursday's AGM, it would appear that the two parties are going to meet head on, with the Championship looking to take the fight very much to the RFU after what it sees as several years of neglect at the hands of both the RFU and PRL. In last weekend's 'The Rugby Paper', Nick Cain, who has consistently taken up the cause of the beleaguered Championship in his weekly column, described what is to follow as a 'collective ultimatum' and that, at long last, under Halliday the Championship will present a united, unified front.

Now, as often is the case, I'm relying pretty much solely here on what I've heard said by folk with strong club links and in whom I have high regard, as well as NC's take on the current crisis facing the Championship, an existential one at that given Halliday's comments as quoted in TRP.

Under the previous incumbent, Steve Lloyd (Doncaster Knights), I get the impression that the Championship had no unified voice and the individual clubs were just that, a group of disparate bodies that provided little challenge to the RFU.

No so now.

Halliday appears to have gone on the front foot from the onset. Now gainfully employed at Ealing Trailfinders, he has made it clear that there are two fundamental concerns that have to be addressed immediately if the Championship is to survive - one is funding and the other is the proposed Prem 1/2 structure. Voted in unopposed by the other Championship clubs, he believes, rightly, that he has a clear mandate, namely to ensure that the Championship has a much bigger role to play in the development of rugby nationally over the coming years.

In words that will resonate with anyone who has followed Coventry over the past 15 years or so, Halliday acknowledged the many individuals within the Championship who in recent years have supported their clubs financially whilst the RFU has done the exact opposite, reducing support at the very time it is most needed and, in a rather Nero-esque manner, watched on as clubs struggled to balance the books:

'I have been extremely impressed by the quality of the individuals involved, and what they stand for is why we have to protect their future...

'There are outstanding individuals at every club, many of them very successful in business, and they have been treated appallingly over the last few years. So that has to change'.

At Coventry, we've known that since as far back as 2012 the club has benefited hugely from the leadership of a chairman and a board of directors who have always put the interests of the club and its supporters first and who have themselves undergone financial sacrifices to ensure that the club remains solvent.

Indeed, whilst hinting at the lack of leadership emanating from the Championship body in the past, Nick Cain does single out the role of Coventry's own Nick Johnston, whom he describes as 'straight talking', prior to Halliday taking over the helm.

Having heard NJ in conversation before, he certainly doesn't hold back and if he and Halliday now feel they have the full backing of the Championship, speaking as one voice, then perhaps they can bring about change in a way that the previous administration just weren't able to do. I'm sure NJ's involvement at Coventry is one of the reason why the club has prospered so well on field in recent times. That and the Chairman's deep pockets, of course.

For far too long it seems that, to me anyway, the RFU has refused to recognize the role the Championship has played in moving the game forward, providing a route for players to progress through to the Premiership outside of their own elite academies, as well as offer opportunities for coaches and referees to develop and, of course, to provide local communities the chance to take an active interest in a sport which might otherwise be denied them.

And it's not just been a failure to recognise the above, it's also been an active denial because to do so furthers its own agenda, namely to reduce funding and channel monies elsewhere.

'Those who play the power game

They take the profits - you take the blame -

When they tell you there's no rise in pay' - Paul Weller

Ethelred's Danegeld of a thousand years past has become a modern day Premgeld, this time overseen by Bill Sweeney and his board of co-conspirators. As Nick Cain so eloquently puts it, what the new Championship leadership can't afford to do: ' is allow the Championship to be forced into a compromise position which, apart from a few tweaks in funding, simply reinforces the current status quo in which the Premiership sees the second tier as an underfunded vassal which is there for it to exploit'.

NC rightly questions how it is that the RFU can get away with cutting the funding to the Championship and leagues below when it is to them that it looks when planning to halt the 'shocking decline in teenage and adult males currently playing the game'. Anyone, even those outside of the game, can see just how flawed such an approach is, anyone that is other than the very people charged with rebuilding it.

Threatened with this unified opposition led by the newly appointed Halliday, the RFU might well find that the Championship, (and indeed the leagues below), will find a voice strong enough to shout down the current inequality of funding and force a rethink of the rule that prevents clubs from gaining promotion if they having got a 10001capacity stadium. As Wasps, Worcester and London Irish have all found to their cost, overstretching themselves with facilities that are beyond their needs will only end badly in the long run.

I've always tried to accompany a post with a song that at the very least has a tenuous link with the subject matter. However, Paul Weller's 'Walls Come Tumbling Down' could have been written specifically for the current cataclysm facing the Championship - 'But you never know until you try/How things just might be -/If we came together so strongly..'.

Halliday does as Weller says, namely: 'You don't have to take this crap/You don't have to sit back and relax/You can actually try changing it'...

It would appear that we're about to find out just how things might be now that the Championship clubs have at last come together to present a unified front. If Halliday really is able to match his actions to his impressive rhetoric, then there should be cause for real optimism amongst a beleaguered set of supporters for who the RFU has long represented an elitist and bureaucratic self-serving body that has always seemed to put the Premiership before all else.

For once, the horse finds itself in font of the cart and pulling in the direction it wants and that can only be good not just for the Championship, but for the game as a whole.'You don't have to take this crap/ You don't have to sit back and relax/ You can actually try changing it'.

For far too long the Championship found itself in something of a jam. With the appointment of Simon Halliday to its lead post, ably supported by the likes of Nick Johnston et al, its governance has the potential of becoming something of a style council.

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Power, energy and anger...a performance of the times

Remember:

'You don't have to take this crap, you can sit back, you don't have to sit back and relax, you can actually try changing it'.