Dai Young is meeting with Scott Morgan this week to start work on joint player development. Peter Rossborough was representing CRFC, and 44 of the other 46 local clubs also sent attendees or delegations.
At the moment, all local talent (Coventry, Warwickshire) is routed via Worcester, of course. This ends in 2016. After this, it's fair to expect Wasps to pitch hard for it - and I'd guess they'll be successful. At that point, it's fair to say all local talent, rather than going to Worcester, will stay in Coventry via the Wasps-Coventry partnership. In that regards, it's very much a positive, I guess.
Wasps have stated that their preferred slot will be Sundays at 2pm; and CRFC will be Saturday at 3pm; so no fixturing clash
Cheers for the update MMM, it's much appreciated. Always good to get this sort of stuff first-hand.
Having said that, there's a few points from this and some of your later posts that I'd politely dispute.
Firstly, I've got to make the point that Eastwood is going to say what he thinks people want to hear, rather than the true reality of the situation. We shouldn't accept it uncritically, imho, even though it clearly suited the council to do so (probably because it got them out of dealing with SISU).
It seems, from what you're saying, that Eastwood thinks it's a given that they will be allowed to move their academy up here in 2016. Personally, I don't think it's anywhere near as certain as that. As well as Worcester, Leicester and Northampton might have something to say about that, and they're big hitters too with the RFU. It would also give a green light to full-blown franchising in rugby, at the moment the RFU can hide behind the fig-leaf of this (and others) being stadium moves, rather than club relocations.
Regardless of the academy status, I also still don't see this as good for CRFC. I can see how Wasps might help out on the player side, and how that might even help CRFC get into the second tier of rugby, rather than the third where they are now. But I think that's where we will then be doomed to remain at best, because Wasps won't want the home town club competing on an even footing for fans, players, and most significantly, sponsors. For me, as a CRFC fan, that's not acceptable - and again I don't want this move validated as being to the benefit of CRFC when clearly it isn't.
Anyway, as I say - appreciate the spirit in which you've offered your thoughts, but clearly we differ.