Champ Rugby at the quarter turn: Titans Rising, 'Club' Acclimatising
Ben Cambriani and Jackson Barling celebrate Rotherham's dramatic win over Bedford
©Gareth Siddons
Five rounds into the 2026-27 Elior Champ, and the two promoted clubs have written very different stories.
Rotherham Titans sit fourth on 17 points, while Blackheath are 10th on 7, having lost four games by a combined 50 points - 37 of them in one afternoon against Ealing.
It is a strange new world down here. The RFU has scrapped automatic promotion to the PREM, replacing it with a criteria-based expansion model, so last season's champions Worcester are still with us and, on current evidence, rather enjoying it.
The bonus-point rules have changed too: you now need to outscore your opponents by three tries to earn the extra point, not simply cross four times. Ask Rotherham, who scored six against Caldy and got nothing extra for their trouble.
Into this season arrived two clubs who spent last season knocking lumps out of each other in National One. Rotherham won the title on the final day; Blackheath, the oldest open rugby club in the world, came up through the play-offs on a memorable afternoon at the expense of London Scottish.
I have been watching both with the particular interest of a man who has spent too long in the lower leagues to resist an underdog.
The view from the top: Worcester purring, Ealing wounded.
Worcester are the only unbeaten side, five from five with a points difference of +151, and they look every inch a PREM club waiting for a door to open. Matt Everard's side have run in tries for fun, including 12 against Rotherham at Sixways.
Ealing are second despite the biggest upset of the early weeks, a 35-33 defeat at the Cornish Pirates in round three.
They responded by putting 71 on Hartpury and 59 on Blackheath, which suggests nobody should read too much into one afternoon in Penzance. Coventry are third, while Dean Richards' Doncaster have been a reminder that pedigree on the touchline does not guarantee points on the board.
Selected positions after round five, as at 18 October. Twelfth place carries the relegation play-off.
Rotherham Titans: winning ugly, winning often
Rotherham have four wins from five, and they have done it while conceding more tries than they have scored - 29 against, 25 for.
Take away one tough afternoon at Sixways and the record reads four wins, 148 points scored, 113 conceded. That is not a team surviving; that is a team competing.
Harvey Biljon's side won National One on the last day of last season, beating Sale FC 34-26 to finish with 22 wins from 26 and more than a thousand points scored.
It was their first return to the second tier in eight seasons. Biljon kept the core. JB Bruzulier, top try-scorer Jackson Barling, Morgan Veness, Callum Bustin, Isaac Shaw and added fly-half Russell Bennett, prop Zac Nearchou and former Wasps and Exeter lock Alfie Bell.
I saw them at close quarters last April, at Park Lane, when they beat Sedgley Park 68-7 and confirmed Sedge's relegation. I went expecting a National One grind. Instead, Rotherham played far more running rugby than I had bargained for: 10 tries from nine different scorers. Their left wing, James Norman, who crossed early in the second half, was my man of the match by a distance.
That ambition has survived the step up: 25 tries in five Champ games, against some of the best defences outside the PREM.
The fixture list was unkind. Three of their first five opponents had finished in last season's top four. Here is how it went:
- Round 1: Rotherham 38 Coventry 35. The result that announced them. Trailing 28-12 at half-time, the Titans led for the first time in the 75th minute and then survived a disallowed Coventry try and a late line-out infringement. Six tries to five, Barling with two. Biljon said he was beaming with pride and that the try straight after half-time turned the match.
- Round 2: Worcester 78 Rotherham 12. Twelve tries conceded, Siva Naulago with a first-half hat-trick. Harry Stone and Shaw crossed for Rotherham, who were level twice in the first quarter before the roof fell in.
- Round 3: Rotherham 40 Bedford 38. Last season's beaten finalists, seen off at Clifton Lane. Another two-point win; another set of frayed nerves in South Yorkshire, with a late charge down from Ben Cambriani denying Bedford a draw.
- Round 4: Rotherham 41 Caldy 26. Six tries to four, Nearchou barging through for one, and the bonus point denied by the new three-try-margin rule.
- Round 5: Richmond 14 Rotherham 29. The first away win and the first bonus point, five tries to two at the Athletic Ground. Kima Ravuvu and Dewald Kotze among the scorers, Lloyd Hayes and Bennett kicking.
Barling captured the step up neatly after the Coventry game. The Champ, he said, is a lot faster and a lot more physical than National One. The Worcester result proves him right. The other four prove Rotherham can cope with it.
Blackheath: 168 years old and losing by inches
Across their first four games, Blackheath were outscored by a net six points - and won only one of them. That, in a sentence, is the cruelty of the Champ for a club stepping up.
Club and their supporters still shout "Club", not "Blackheath" were founded in 1858 and have not played at this level since 1999.
They finished second in National One last season, beat Plymouth Albion 22-10 in the play-off, then won 27-7 against London Scottish at the Richmond Athletic Ground in May. That was a 12th straight win, watched by more than 2,000.
Tom Stradwick's squad is largely the one that went up. Home is The Utilita at Well Hall, with room for 1,650; Worcester's Sixways holds nearly six times that.
The man to watch is the hooker Billy Harding. His 49 tries in National One (including his one in the play-offs) last season made him the leading try-scorer across all twelve levels of English club rugby.
TRU readers will know the template. Our friend Johnny Matthews scored 29 tries in 26 games at hooker for Sedgley Park in 2016-17, back when Sedge were in National Two.
He went north to Boroughmuir, then Glasgow Warriors, and in 2023 scored on his Scotland debut against Romania at the World Cup. Not bad for a Liverpool lad who didn't sign a professional contract until he was 26 - and who, Titans fans will enjoy hearing, also had a spell at Rotherham along the way.
Nobody is suggesting Harding should start learning the words to a national anthem. But Matthews proves that a hooker who keeps finishing off the maul gets noticed, whatever the level. If Blackheath stay up, Harding's tries will be a large part of why.
- Round 1: Nottingham 38 Blackheath 31. A losing bonus point on the opening night.
- Round 2: Blackheath 24 Caldy 28. Another four-point defeat, another losing bonus.
- Round 3: Blackheath 33 Doncaster 26. History. Their first win at Level 2 since beating Fylde 27-26 on 1 May 1999. Doncaster went 12-0 up, then lost three players to the sin bin; tries from Luke Pollock, Archie Holland and Jordan Burns and the boot of Sam Morley did the rest.
Telusa Veainu's late try set up a grandstand finish, but Blackheath forced the turnover. Stradwick praised the grit, and the players' work at the breakdown.
- Round 4: Coventry 38 Blackheath 36. Away, on a Friday night, five days after the Doncaster game. Two points. A third losing bonus.
- Round 5: Blackheath 22 Ealing 59. The gap between a newly promoted side and last season's table-toppers, laid bare.
Those three losing bonus points are not a consolation; they are the reason Blackheath sit two points clear of the relegation play-off spot rather than in it. The worry is the run-in to November: Their next two are Worcester away and Bedford at home.
What comes next: A date at Well Hall
The fixture to circle is Saturday 21 November, when Rotherham travel to Well Hall. Last season these two split their National One meetings - Rotherham won 24-19 at Clifton Lane in November, Blackheath 22-15 at home in March and they will meet now as the Champ's two newest residents.
Before that, round six opens on 30 October with Blackheath's Friday-night trip to Worcester, the least forgiving fixture in the division. Rotherham host the Cornish Pirates on 1 November, then go to Nottingham and host Hartpury. If Rotherham are still in the top four by the time they reach South East London, the conversation around them only grows.
For Blackheath, the arithmetic is simpler. Turn two of those losing bonus points into wins and they are mid-table. Keep losing by a score and they will be nervously eyeing 12th all winter. Five games in, the oldest club in the world has proved it belongs at this level. Now it has to prove it can stay.
