Andy Goode

Lovely state, James.

And there's a lot of good people at Ealing that are...

desperately annoyed with the fact that they've won the championship now.

I think it's either five out of the last six years or actually they won it again at the weekend because they've gone 26 games unbeaten when they smashed Bedford on Saturday.

So big shout out to Ealing for that.

But also the barriers to entry around getting into the Prem.

Now,

I heard that Prem Rugby wanted anyone that was going to come into the Prem or had aspirations to come into the Prem, that they had to invest 125 million quid over five years to have the right to play in the Prem.

So before you've done anything else, you just got to say, right, here's 125 mil to get in the Prem because they're changing the model of the P shares and all that stuff.

And you're like, what?

That is honestly mind-boggling.

125 mil.

Effectively, James, how much is that a year over five years?

A lot.

25 mil a year to pay into the Prem just to be in it.

So it's no wonder that Ealing are looking elsewhere, looking at the URC.

If the Welsh teams do drop down to 300,

regions from the four that are currently there.

It's mind-boggling.

Yeah, Ealing have got a squad that they're not going to be mid-table in the Prem, but they'd put up just as much as a fight of Newcastle and they'd invest more.