It is about six miles from Twickenham to Ealing as the ball flies, but the gap felt a good stretch longer than that on Saturday. Two days after the Rugby Football Union’s chief executive, Bill Sweeney, faced down a vote of no confidence at a special general meeting, two of the rebel clubs involved in the attempt to get rid of him, Nottingham and Ealing Trailfinders, were playing each other in the Championship.
It is an odd spot for the hotbed of a rebellion, tucked away in the far corner of the west London suburbs, but there was an unmistakable burble of gossip in the clubhouse, where the members were catching each other up on all the goings-on at Twickenham.
Nottingham’s chair, Alistair Bow, is the co-chair of the Whole Game Union, which lodged the motion against Sweeney, and has been one of the loudest voices in the debate. He had skipped the game, (“family business”, he said) and to be fair it was a good one to miss.
“We’ll be happy if we lose by less than 50,” one of Nottingham’s supporters told me. When I caught up with him again at half-time, his team were already trailing 42-0. The only real contest was in seeing whether or not Ealing could beat the clock and score a point for every minute played. They did, winning 82-5.
Ealing are an odd club, emblematic of how dysfunctional English rugby has become while Sweeney has been in charge. Their team is too good for the Championship, but their ground is not good enough for the Premiership. They were already 12 points clear at the top of the table heading into this match, and their points difference runs into the hundreds.
They have put 95 on Cambridge, 92 on Ampthill, 84 on the Cornish Pirates. Nottingham are a fine side, fifth in the table, but still have the look, and feel of a semi-pro team, with a beanpole lock, a squat prop, and a couple of kids in the mix. They have had some good players go through, mind you, most recently Ollie Chessum and Ellis Mee.
Ealing, on the other hand, have 15 players who all have the build of men who spend 24/7 in the gym, all the same size and shape, give or take a couple of inches, and, of course, one hulking prop, Biyi Alo, once of Wasps, and only lately back from a spell playing in the Top 14 for Racing 92. He looks as if he eats a couple of lightly buttered scrum-halves on the side of his three Shredded Wheat.
The team are studded with players with that sort of pedigree. The hooker is ex-Edinburgh and London Irish, the fly-half used to be at Newcastle Falcons, the wing played a hundred games for Northampton Saints. With places for 10 teams in the top league in England, there is just not enough room for them in the Premiership.
Ealing is the next best place to be. They are a Premiership squad in everything bar their standing. But their players will not be joining the league any time soon, unless they are picked up by one of the clubs who are already in it.
Two weeks ago, Ealing were told again that their ground had failed to meet the minimum standards. The requirements had just been loosened, to allow anyone who won promotion a four-year runway to build up their ground to the point where it could hold 10,001 fans, as long as they already had planning permission and funding in place. To the surprise of exactly no one I spoke to at the club, Ealing somehow fell short again, anyway.
The main problem seems to be access, there is one little road in and out of the ground and the council are not cooperative. But the lingering suspicion among the supporters is that if it was not that stopping them, it would be something else.
There is a prevailing sense that the club are not wanted. There are enough London clubs already, and the team they would probably replace, Newcastle, who are broke and bottom of the Premiership, are the only club in their corner of the country.
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It is not entirely clear what Ealing would do with 10,001 seats if they had them. Their crowd for this match (“about average” I’m told) was about 10% of that, and the big East Stand was shut.
Their owner, the multimillionaire Mike Gooley, is happy enough to spend his money on the squad, but is too smart to splash it on a stadium he cannot fill just so he has a shot at getting into the top league, especially when so many other teams in that sort of position have gone out of business recently.
There has been talk about the possibility of merging with a Welsh side or joining the United Rugby Championship, but right now Ealing feel like the best kept secret in London sport, a place where you can watch Premiership-standard rugby for £20 and walk right around the pitch while you are doing it.
Some of the fans I spoke to were happy enough for the club to stay where they are, for that reason. They expect prices would double if they went up and the queues at the bar would be a sight longer too.
On a sunny afternoon, when you have a pint in one hand and your team are leading by 50 points, the Championship is not such a bad place to be. Quiet enough to plot a coup, too, if that is what you want to do.