BUCS Final

I understand Exeter and Loughborough regard the national league side as their first XV.

So the league must be below level 4.

But as both as safe, the Saturday players might have turned out.

Wow! That's some statement. Don't think it's accurate, particularly when winter arrives.

Some of the Super Rugby second XVs play in National League 2.

The 1st teams play a fabulous standard. 

There is a difference in quality over the season between the sides that field professional academy players that are doing a degree as well and those that seem to be mostly made up of outstanding recent schools players (many of whom would have been in the academy system but made it as far). Whilst the stronger squads inevitably rise to the top over the course of the year there have been many instances where a team with virtually no professional club signed up players have upset one of the big boys. I can only recommend watching the games as they generally w

don’t interfere with following club rugby. 

From the outside it seems a pretty honest League as the players and DoRs would all know and would call out any shenanigans fielding non-students. 

The competition to stay in the top tier is as fierce as the press to get into it. Promotion and Relegation has created a lively structure. No ring-fencing there.

The crowds are vocal and magnificent (keep in mind I’m speaking as a National 1 supporter) though I imagine a lot of that is down to amazingly low beer prices (especially at Durham).

Agree with all of that. The first-team rugby at the top level is frighteningly good, and made up of academy rejects and people who were never even on the books to start with. My own old university, Exeter, have a *very* good first XV who I wouldn't like to see play Moseley.

It's another triumph of rugby in England - while the structure has been mucked around with endlessly the university system/leagues have quietly built themselves back up in standard almost to 1960s levels - and they've done all this without anyone really noticing. I'm not sure if it's a sad indictment of the RFU or club rugby or both, but if you support a team in level 3 or below, there are multiple universities whose sides of genuine bona fide students could do your team a mischief. A wire diagram of English rugby should show Super Rugby pretty much alongside National 1/2 IMO.

Which should be food for thought on a number of levels.

2 to go Brunel were 24:20 up but camped on their own tryline. Curfc the gave aaway a couple of pens in quick succession leading to a 5m line out for Brunel at the other end which they scored from.

The women's game obv has a lot to teach the boys at BUCS level

As I've already said in this thread, I'm hugely supportive of university rugby - but that 'produces and develops' is a hoary old problem isn't it. 

I'd be interested in how many ex-Loughborough players are lighting up the Premiership, Championship and National One who'd never picked up a rugby ball before they went to Loughborough*.

Or is it more (as to be fair Loughborough has always been, and Exeter is becoming now), that people who want to play rugby at university apply to them? 

Develops? Obviously. Produces? From scratch? Or takes on the products of other clubs/schools in the main?

*I know such people are out there - Lewis Bean, now of Glasgow, was one. He'd never picked up a rugby ball, got into his battalion team, stood out enough there to play for the Army, then went to Moseley. Pretty stratospheric rise from a standing start. But if Loughborough (or any other university) are routinely producing large numbers of top-three-tiers rugby players out the back end that weren't rugby players going in at 18-19 then that's worth knowing/trying to understand.