Ealing Trailfinders

In 2014, owner Mike Gooley sent a letter to club members to clear up a few misconceptions about his involvement with Ealing Trailfinders.

He wrote, ‘Normally a rugby club relies for the bulk of their income on the pockets of the membership. The fact that Ealing Rugby Club are still in debt after 143 years of existence demonstrates that, like just about all rugby clubs, more is taken out than is put in.

‘I can say without fear of contradiction, that ETRC enjoy quite extraordinary and unique good fortune and just ask that it is recognised by every member. 

‘He dances well to whom fortune pipes’

Ealing have always been the outsiders of English rugby. On January 26, 1871, so legend has it, the West Londoners were invited to a meeting of 23 clubs at the Pall Mall Restaurant in Haymarket, only for its representative to end up taking a detour to the pub. He never made it to the restaurant.

The other 21 guests who met that day would become the founding fathers of rugby by forming the RFU. And so Ealing’s role in the history of the game was reduced to an amusing footnote.

For the record, the other ‘no show’ was from Wasps, whose man not only turned up at the wrong place, at the wrong time, but also on the wrong day.

Since then, Ealing have had to fight for attention amid much bigger, more illustrious neighbours, including Harlequins, Richmond, London Scottish, London Welsh, Rosslyn Park and London Irish, not to mention Wasps before they were, ultimately, sent to Coventry in 2015.

Things have often not gone their way, and not only as those involved in rugby are wont to do, because they were distracted by licensed premises. In 2009, for instance, with the club in National League Three, the RFU decided, mid-season, to scrap an end-of-season play-off and thus deprived Ealing the chance of winning promotion.

Fast forward almost ten years, four promotions (and a relegation), and another power-that-be, seemed to be against them. Then Premiership Rugby CEO Mark McCafferty expressed his concerns about Ealing’s push to become a top-flight club. That seemed understandable given London Welsh’s ill-fated flirtation with the top flight which ended in liquidation, only for McCafferty to add that, “I don’t know the Ealing set-up and I don’t know the people there”. 

Around the same time, Times journalist Owen Slot said it would be ‘embarrassing’ if Ealing became a Premiership outfit given that average attendances had only just surpassed the 1,000-mark. 

And then, in the Spring of 2019, reports began to emerge that the Premiership could become ring-fenced, a closed-shop that would bring promotion and relegation to an end after 2020. The rumours had been fluttering around for some time, but on this occasion, the drawbridge seemed to genuinely be closing.

But everything still had to go to plan. Ealing have been investing heavily for some time. And, right now, with freshly relegated Newcastle Falcons considered by some to be back in the Premiership before a Championship ball had been kicked, the West Londoners represent the best chance to stop them. 

Probably none of the thirteen [Premiership stakeholders] want that to happen though. In short, Ealing are the relative that nobody wants at the family wedding.

The man who’s made them like that, through investment and threatening the elite of English rugby – as opposed to poor social etiquette – is Mike Gooley. And he’s not a man to be taken lightly.

During the 1950s and 1960s he spent twelve years with the armed forces, most of which were spent in the SAS. After leaving the Army, he then went gold prospecting in South America only to come home with nothing and then discover that he was being investigated by MI6 as a possible mercenary.  

He then tried to start a freefall parachute club but couldn’t get any sponsors. Eventually he set up Trailfinders with two friends from his SAS days. “I called Thomas Cook to ask about travelling overland to Kathmandu, only to be told they ‘didn’t do that sort of thing’”, he said. So, Gooley and his associates started their own travel agency instead.

Gooley first crossed paths with Ealing Rugby Club 22 years ago.

“The pivotal moment was in 1997 when Hugh Hutchinson became president not long after the sport became professional,” says Dick Tyson, author of the club’s official biography, Fire & Fury. “He was the driving force to get the club into the big time.” 

“At the same time,” adds Dick Craig, the current president, “there were one or two individuals who wanted to promote youth and mini rugby to a greater degree than we had been, including David Bujega, who is sadly no longer with us – there is a stand named in his honour – as well as David Miller and Charles McGee. Moving back to Ealing would also prove to be a catalyst.”

Home games were being played at Berkeley Fields, a couple of miles away in Greenford. But an old sports ground that doubled up as a donkey sanctuary on Vallis Way that was owned by Great Western Railway had come up for auction. Hutchinson spotted an opportunity to take his club back to its roots. 

The other person bidding in the silent auction was Gooley and, soon after his bid had been successful, Hutchinson was on the phone, suggesting that the rugby club could become his tenants.

“In those early days,” says Craig, “it was very much an opportunity to have a glass of wine and watch a game of rugby. But we had a young executive, something clicked and Mike generously started to fund us for kit.”

It took a number of years before Gooley began to seriously invest in what would become Ealing Trailfinders Rugby Club. 

Indeed, he once said, “People think the SAS is full of Rambo types, but we’re really quite cautious, evaluating risks carefully before committing ourselves. That attitude served me well.” And so it proved with Ealing.

“It was one of those circumstances that came down to being in the right place at the right time,” continues Craig. “Mike has developed Vallis Way over the years and it is what you see today – one of the best sites with facilities for sport of anywhere in the country.” 

During the first home game of the season in the Championship Cup against newly-promoted Ampthill, it’s not hard to spot Craig striding through the clubhouse. He is a gregarious chap, resplendent in a green pinstripe blazer who famously – within the confines of the rugby club at least – organised a trip to Ireland back in 2003, which set a world record for the largest tour by any sporting club.  

“We took around 530 people on that tour and had a dozen coaches ferrying us around,” he says, proudly. “But like every other rugby club in England, winning the World Cup in 2003 was like firing a starting gun, the whole thing exploded overnight and all clubs benefited.” 

However, despite the impressive tour numbers, Craig admits that the club suffers from a lack of visibility, even within Ealing itself.

There are two stations close to Vallis Way. From Castle Bar Park it’s a ten-minute stroll through the back streets of leafy suburbia and there is only one train every half hour. Alternatively, there is West Ealing. On a Saturday afternoon you’ll find upmarket street traders selling works of art, along with an inevitable smattering of artisan coffee houses and cafes but no sign of a rugby club. 

And the fifteen-minute walk from the station to the ground offers no further clues that this is home to arguably the best and most exciting club operating outside of the Premiership. The walk takes you past a park where the kids are playing football and past a row of million-pound properties on Argyll Road. Then a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it road sign appears by a roundabout with an arrow that points to ‘Trailfinders Sports Club’.

Anyone expecting to walk into a rather tinpot outfit will be pleasantly surprised. At first, it’s not much to look at it. A functional new, 1,000-capacity stand at one end, the smaller David Bujega Stand at the other. But the main grandstand features changing rooms and offices that wouldn’t look out of place at a Premiership ground. Everything feels so new and everywhere is so spotlessly clean. It is the antithesis of what you might expect from a club of this size.

The driving force on the pitch is director of rugby Ben Ward, who first started playing for Ealing Trailfinders in 2004. He was a student at St Mary’s University in Twickenham and was invited down to Vallis Way to ‘play for pay’ and do odd jobs around the club. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse given it would support the two things every student needs money for – rent and beer.

Injury curtailed his career as a fly-half but, at the age of 26, he was appointed as head coach by Ealing director of rugby Mike Cudmore, who had been an instrumental figure in the club’s rise through the amateur ranks. 

“I think fly-halves are almost like coaches anyway because they are bossing people around the pitch, so I had an understanding of how I wanted to play and Mike (Cudmore) was very good in that he let me get on with things,” explains Ben. 

“We had got as far as the Championship, which was professional and, to be fair, we took an absolute beating. It was at that stage, in 2014, that Mike Cudmore decided to step down at the end of the season. 

“Then I sat down with the owner (Gooley) to discuss where he saw the club in five or ten years and we put together a plan of how we could become an established, top of the table Championship club. That was six years ago.  

“We don’t always agree on everything but normally we’re pretty aligned, and it was a fairly relaxed conversation. He came back a couple of days later and said ‘yeah, let’s do it!’”

It is estimated that Gooley has pumped around £20m into the club. 

“It took three years to really take us from semi-professional to full-time,” says Ben. “Three or four years ago we took that big leap to not just being a low-end Championship side, but one that could challenge in the top four. 

“It’s one of the beauties of my relationship with Mike and this club. We have no committee or board as such. My relationship with him is that I run the rugby side. So, when I have those conversations, it’s just like me and you talking now. It’s about what my vision is, along with his vision. Generally, he will receive three to four emails off me a week, there will sometimes be a phone call. Sometimes, every three to four weeks, there will be a meeting.

“During the first three years, that plan changed quite a lot. I knew we needed the players.  

“In 2014, we had just been relegated into National One. So, it wasn’t just about getting players who could get us promoted. It was about getting players who could survive at Championship level.  

“We got that about 50 per cent right,” admits Ben. “What I didn’t appreciate at the time were the infrastructure changes around that, like the coaching staff, the medical team, the S&C team, the analysts. That was a big change for me, where we went from year one and having 30 full-time players and fifteen part-time staff, year two 45 full-time players, year three 45 full-time players and fifteen full-time staff.

“Instead of thinking one or two years ahead, you’re now thinking five years ahead. Even now, we’re only at our second game of the season but there is a lot of planning going on towards next season. It never stops.” Ben admits he’s been approached by other clubs but says he has no desire to leave.

The club invited down the Premiership’s auditors back in 2018. On the face of it, this was a pointless exercise given Ealing stood no chance of being promoted and the ground wouldn’t be considered big enough to host Premiership matches. But it was to ensure Ealing wouldn’t be caught out if the club won the Championship the following season. 

 “We wouldn’t be able to play Premiership home games here,” says Ben. “It would have to be a football ground nearby. There is confidentiality, and until it happens then we wouldn’t announce [that stadium] but we have it all in place.”

However, he does feel the dice are loaded against any team that wins promotion. “It’s very difficult in terms of how the funds are distributed,” he says.
“I was at a meeting last week and, if we were to go up, we would effectively get £1.4m. That is considerably less than every other team in that division. In fact, I think we would get a bigger parachute payment (around £2m) for being relegated. So, it doesn’t quite make sense. But that is where the English game is at the moment.”

He adds that talk of ‘ring-fencing’ seems to be off the agenda, noting that Exeter operated on a similar scale to Ealing not so long ago. “At Exeter, before they moved to Sandy Park, they were averaging crowds of 800 to 1,200. That’s no different to where we are now.

“There’s nothing to say we wouldn’t go up and come straight back down but using things like the parachute payment you are able to make those improvements. From where we were 15 years ago [in London Two North], it’s night and day. Even, from five years ago [in National One], we’re also in a completely different place.”

But the reality is, if they were to go up, it would take a minor miracle for Ealing Trailfinders to avoid the drop, which poses a conundrum for its supporters. 

A group known as The Dirty Dozen (there are 15 now) got to know each other through taking their kids to mini rugby, then became supporters in their own right. They have been coming here since 2005 and you’ll always find them in the lower tier of the main grandstand by the halfway line.

One of the ‘dozen’ is Mark Cox. “We also sponsor a player. This season it’s James Cordy-Reddin and we’ve been doing that for seven or eight years.
It’s about being to engage with the players, meet them in the bar after the game. This is a very sociable club,” he says.

 “The whole ring-fencing debate has been discussed in our group. Anything that denies us getting promoted by right is wrong. Whether we would enjoy the Premiership remains to be seen. It’s clear that Mike Gooley’s ambition is to find out and he has every right to.

“If you look around, when we first came here, none of these facilities existed. It’s a great place to play rugby. The challenge, being very honest about it, was about whether it was a real rugby club in terms of how you integrated the professional side with the amateur side and how the minis and youths are integrated.”

The fact that there was no official differentiation between professional and amateur sides meant that the amateur XVs couldn’t play in their respective RFU’s leagues.

For the start of this season a new amateur club, Ealing Trailfinders 1871 has been formed to operate independently within the RFU regulations and compete independently within the RFU league structure. It bridges a gap in the club structure, between a competitive amateur side and the professional team, and also completes the club picture, something Exeter Chiefs did recently in bringing local side Wessex under their wing and renaming them Exeter Athletic. 

“The least enjoyable season was the first we had in the Championship. We got tonked every week,” adds another ‘dozen’ member Ian Price, changing the topic. “I just hope that if we get there [to the Premiership], we don’t put our own interests before the wider interests of the sport and get roped into an arrangement where we are allowed to go up and then the ladder gets pulled up.” 

And what about players, officials or even supporters of other clubs who think Ealing are too small to join the bigtime? “Stuff ‘em,” says Ian. “And you can quote me on that.” Well, if you insist...

Walk on another 30 yards or so and you’ll find father and daughter supporters, Rod and Sherri Curtis, sat at a table that is within touching distance of the touchline and just a few feet from the bar.

“My wife passed away and I got to retirement age,” says Rod. “We both had free Saturdays because her partner follows Newcastle United, so we thought we’d have a look. Come down to any game here for the last three years and you’ll see us at this table. We get here early. We always have a few drinks. We feel like part of a community.” 

 “Most of the core fans have been involved with the club at a lower level, with the youths and minis,” adds Sherri. “They’ve taken us in and everyone gets to know each other. We’ve been to games at bigger stadiums, and it’s impersonal.”

Given that the cozy, family feel of the club is the reason they love Ealing so much, Rod fears that promotion will change that, and not necessarily for the better.  “It may be the end of our viewing of rugby at Ealing,” he says. “If they got to the Premiership I’m not sure the fanbase would significantly improve.”

In modern business parlance you would define both Trailfinders and Ealing as disruptors.

Ealing have also recently introduced an academy, which is perhaps the nearest thing we have to an American-style approach to sport and education, where the best young talent across NFL and NBA go into the college system while also developing their game.

“We spoke to the RFU about having a Premiership academy – we were prepared to finance it – but we were told we’re not a Premiership shareholder, so we’re not allowed that,” explains Ben. “So, we looked at it and talked about how we had to think outside the box. If you think about the best, most successful teams, Canterbury Crusaders, Leinster, Saracens, the thing they have in common is that a lot of their players have come through their system.  

“And we found the best way to do that and be able to compete with Premiership sides was to offer an education with that as well. So if I’m sitting down with you as a parent and I say, ‘your son has a one-year contract with Harlequins or a three-year deal with us plus he’ll get a degree out of that’, what is the more sensible route? That’s how we’ve looked at it. We’ll have them for three years and we feel they will be more rounded individuals through having that degree as well.”

The future is always on the mind of Ealing Trailfinders, and they’re willing to be patient. It took Gooley’s Trailfinders company 22 years to serve it’s one millionth customer. It took just four more years to reach two million. He has had to be similarly patient with the growth of Ealing’s fanbase. It is only just last year that the club averaged more than 1,000 supporters for home matches. Promotion would see those figures double, if not triple, swollen by the number of away fans. 

On this particular day a three-figure crowd sees Ealing brush Ampthill aside by 43-5. It is the sort of routine demolition that home fans have been accustomed to. 

Club captain Rayn Smid is in his fourth season at Ealing, having joined from Bristol. “The way Ealing play, they just come at you from everywhere,” he says. “When I came, they had just avoided relegation. They went from 11th to finishing third and I just loved being part of that story.

“Wardy saw an opportunity. We’ve got one of the best grounds and best facilities in the Championship. What I would say to any critics is, ‘come and have a watch’. Look at what we’re doing. You can’t just write us off before we’ve begun. 

“There were 3,500-4,000 people here when we beat London Irish last season (in the Championship Cup Final by 23-17). We showed that we could beat one of the big boys. It’s not a massive stadium but it does create a unique vibe when we have bigger clubs here.”

He fears that were the Premiership to become ring-fenced it would have dire consequences for the game. “One of the most viewed games was Sale against Bristol because it was battle near the bottom of the table,” says Rayn. “It would be tough to keep the Championship alive if you didn’t have promotion or relegation.”  

It’s hard to argue with that point. Imagine a Premiership where there are no relegation battles, where teams towards bottom of the table simply play out a series of meaningless end-of-season matches.

But also imagine a Premiership without Exeter, club rugby’s greatest story of the past decade.

Or, as Ward puts it, “People love an underdog story. People like the story of the team that is going against the grain.”

And maybe, almost 150 years after failing to turn up at Pall Mall, Ealing are ready to join the party.  

Words by: Ryan Herman

Pictures by: Andre Silva

This extract was taken from issue 8 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.