OEs withdraw from Nat1

Rabbie, that may be, but for a game where Club had 2k plus people as a gate and are rumoured to have taken over £50k through lunch, bar, food stalls etc in the Dec 2019 game (last time clubs played), I thought the departure of OEs would have hurt Blackheath more than most, to turn away that amount of income and you will not be able to claim that back! 

May I suggest that this may have been very short sighted by some, or were they becoming a little more than a noisy neighbour and the loss of income was just a small price to pay?

There is RFU funding for clubs that suffer losses due to postponed matches.

What do you do when a game is postponed?

I read Scrumtime's post to mean the players, possibly with others,  instigated the action against Paulsen's estate - not they were at fault.

I had to ask them the question, to be fair they were gutted but pretty open about it.

It turns out that this was all started by two ex players. Both who left the club on Jan 2020, when the money stopped. One started a wats ap group headed, " I'm going to war on OE's, who is owed what" and then sent it to every player that had left.

Both of these players, who's names are out there for doing this, are now plying their trade elsewhere at local clubs.

Mr Paulsen it seems was not totally the picture that was painted. We all know that Secure Trading went down in May 2019 owing the RFU several millions. He owes the club via Cyber1 (still active and nasdaq listed) a very large sum, although the club is taking legal action to reclaim this, the hearing date has been moved back 3 times due to COVID, the last date it was due to be heard was June but has been moved back to Oct they were saying, that is the "owed sponsorship" in the press announcement, he also owes and has outstanding many debits to many at OEs. That might explain the timing of things!

Reducing reliance on individual donors/sponsors is also key - unless they are Trailfinders’ owner with an enlightened long-term funding strategy, you are always focussed on the whims of one or two people and that is dangerous. 

As we move into a new season we are trying to find all sorts of indicators as to how income generation will change - will gates rise, will pre-match lunches sell out, will people stay in the Bar after matches, will they attend Events? Finding the answers to all of those questions will happen in the first few weeks of the season so by Christmas we will have a clearer idea of how our finances will change this season.

Let’s hope the 47 remaining NLR Clubs can get through this early period and continue to show the rest of the game how to run successful rugby clubs.