Rugby Union: Brian Dick previews the new season
HE task facing Moseley and Bees this season is essentially the same one – oval-ball alchemy, how to forge a team more precious and more effective than the sum of its constituent parts and one capable of staying in the Championship.
Moseley have done that well in recent campaigns and have even manufactured some precious metal along the way. Not even the hours of drab one-out fringe attacks so characteristic of the previous winter should be allowed to obscure the brilliance of Twickenham.
Bees have been less so. Their financial chickens came home to roost last October and they flirted perilously close to a second relegation in two years.
Not even the scintillating, neck-saving victory at Billesley Common on the final day of last season should be allowed to obscure that.
Thankfully, things have stabilised in Solihull. Bees have made a physical and mental move to Damson Park, they operate on their £300,000 central funding and whatever else they can glean from a difficult economic climate.
Significantly they have given up trying to unlock the equity in Sharmans Cross, a feat made impossible by red tape and the dog-walking habits of one or two councillors, and their energies can be more sensibly directed.
It is for the best even though their lesson has been a painful and expensive one.
Across the city at Moseley times are equally hard. Their budget is significantly higher but at £500,000 is still one of the lowest in the second tier and, perhaps worryingly, less than it was for 2009/10.
You do tend to get what you pay for in professional sport and Moseley and Bees have spent the summer shopping in similar sorts of stores, if not stood in exactly the same queues.
Mose have been able to splash out on the odd proven product, like former Doncaster skipper Anthony Carter and Bedford’s Brad Davies but, by and large, it’s been a case of sifting through the bargain buckets to find an unpolished diamond amid the journeymen and academy cast-offs.
In the shape of South African scrum-half Ryan de la Harpe they believe they have done just that.
Russell Earnshaw, meanwhile, has increased the average age of his entire squad by bringing in prop Ngalu Tau – a former team-mate at Castle Park and now 41 years young.
