It has been confirmed that newly promoted Birmingham & Solihull Rugby Club will be plying their trade in National League 2 South in the 2018/19 season, as a result of a level transfer process operated by the RFU’s National Clubs Association.

The Midlands Premier Division champions, who secured promotion after winning 23 of their 26 games in this season’s campaign, ordinarily would have been promoted to the northern section of National League 2. However, due to an imbalance of numbers in the respective divisions as a result of promotions and relegations from other leagues, one club - Birmingham & Solihull - has been level transferred from the North to the South on the basis of relative mileage calculations.

The Bees will therefore join 15 other clubs in a league competition which will begin in September 2018 and run to the end of April 2019, over a season spanning 30 games.

National League 2 South will feature three sides from around the Bristol area – Clifton, Old Redcliffians and Dings Crusaders, as well as other south western-based teams Taunton Titans in Somerset and Redruth in Cornwall.

There will also be trips to Kent to play Tonbridge Juddians and Canterbury, as well as visits to home counties-based Old Albanians, London Irish Wild Geese, Barnes and Henley Hawks, with Redingensians further west along the M4 near Reading.

Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk will be the eastern-most club on the fixture list, with Worthing Raiders in Sussex the most southerly road trip on the itinerary. The Bees will need to take to the air to play Guernsey, after the Channel Island club’s promotion to NL2S.

As well as finding themselves in unfamiliar geographical territory, the Bees will also go into the 2018/18 season with a 5 Championship point deduction. The sanction was handed down by a North Midlands RFU Disciplinary hearing on 1st May as a result of playing, in game between Birmingham & Solihull Rugby Club and Newport (Salop) on 28th April, a player who had been sent off before he had appeared before an appropriate disciplinary panel.

The Disciplinary panel decided on a sanction of a deduction of 5 competition points against the club to apply to the 2018-2019 season as “this was considered the minimum penalty that could be applied to maintain consistency and fairness to other clubs who had been similarly sanctioned during the current season.”

After careful consideration and despite considerable frustration and disappointment around the circumstances of the case, the club has reluctantly decided not to appeal against the decision.

The fixture list for the new season, along with the Bees’ pre-season programme, will be published in the coming weeks with further information about the league available at www.ncarugby.com .

ENDS

After careful consideration and despite considerable frustration and disappointment around the circumstances of the case, the club has reluctantly decided not to appeal against the decision.

The fixture list for the new season, along with the Bees’ pre-season programme, will be published in the coming weeks with further information about the league available at www.ncarugby.com .

ENDS