Champ Rugby: England’s Second Tier, Explained

What Champ Rugby is

Champ Rugby sits directly below Premiership Rugby in the English game, and is the route by which clubs can, in theory, reach the top flight. The Rugby Football Union unveiled the rebrand on 15 May 2025, replacing the RFU Championship name the division had carried for sixteen seasons.

The rebrand came with structural changes: the league expanded to 14 clubs, and promotion and relegation against National League 1 — the third tier — was restored, sharpening the competition at both ends of the table.

London in Champ Rugby: Ealing Trailfinders

West London club Ealing Trailfinders, based at Trailfinders Sports Club, is the competition’s London representative. The club has been one of the division’s dominant sides in recent seasons, winning the title in 2021–22, 2023–24 and 2024–25.

Despite that run of titles, Ealing were not promoted to the Premiership on any of those occasions — a recurring subplot in the competition, and the clearest illustration of the rule covered below.

Promotion and the ground-capacity rule

Premiership Rugby sets a minimum stadium capacity for any club seeking promotion from Champ Rugby. Ealing Trailfinders’ home ground, Trailfinders Sports Club, has repeatedly fallen short of that threshold, meaning the club has won the second-tier title three times without going up.

It is a known tension in the structure of English rugby: a club can be the best team in the division on the pitch and still be kept out of the top flight by its off-pitch capacity. The rule applies to every Champ Rugby club, not just Ealing, and shapes how seriously clubs across the division invest in ground redevelopment.

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