Rugby's Future Challenges: West Midlands Sleeping Giant?

Coventry were relegated from the championship 2 years ago, Birmingham & Solihull have suffered successive relegations whilst Stourbridge have also suffered relegation to the fourth tier for the first time in 10 years this summer.  Meanwhile Dudley Kingswinford and the now stricken Rugby Lions gained promotion to the self same 4^th division to join Bromsgrove.  This leaves the wider West Midlands with one championship side and one National League 1 side.  Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK but is currently a top level rugby desert, the claim that Worcester is representative of Birmingham is misleading Worcester is closer to Gloucester than it is Birmingham.  Nobody previously claimed Worcester could do without a side because Gloucester had one.  This is definitely a problem as opposed to a challenge, a club in Birmingham or the greater West Midlands would help the league commercially by accessing a large potential fan and sponsor pool as well as giving current sponsors better representation in the country’s second city and helping to grow Rugby as a major force in the way Sale have done in Manchester.

Moseley and Coventry are the only sides historically strong enough to represent the region on a national scale; so unsurprisingly it is upon these two club’s shoulders that realistic hope for the future depends.  Both have ambitious future plans but how realistic these are remains to be seen, Coventry certainly has the quality of local rugby to sustain a top Championship club if not a Premiership club and Birmingham certainly has the commercial fire power to back a Premiership side.  However both of these clubs are a long way from the Premiership, with Moseley staring a relegation battle to remain in the Championship never mind push for promotion. 

What are the prospects for them?  Coventry has announced an ambitious plan to grow their income and improve their side thus growing their income again.  This sounds simple when written like this but as they acknowledge that is far from the case, Bedford is their ideal model for now: healthy crowds, young hungry players supplemented with a few senior players living within their means.  Moseley has planning permission for a large grandstand that would make promotion an achievable goal presuming some Ground Criteria are retained.  A sort of Sale+ is their ideal solution, growing in a larger and more crowded market place is tough and will certainly take an investor willing to sink a few millions in, this is hardly an ideal situation but it hasn’t harmed Sale too much and if Moseley retained their own ground then they may become more like Northampton but with access to a far larger population.