"What rattled your cage, then?"

That's Joe - straight to the point as usual!

To explain, then. Over the past season, thanks to a range of circumstances most notable of which is possibly a tendency for me to have "ideas" (like the stupid one of send the regional team to the USA...) or otherwise stand out a bit by expressing my views on a range of subjects, I have found myself as both Regional Programme Manager and County Manager. And also club and even district manager (there is a lesson here I suspect which probably involves saying "no" occasionally).

Anyway it was suggested that maybe the promulgation of contentious writings while occupying these posts might not be a good idea as it would lead to confusion in some parts as to whether or not what was being said was in any way official "policy".

Now I would not normally agree because I think people are quite intelligent enough to understand when someone is writing in a personal or "professional" capacity, but when I started getting complaints about my being engaged in the heinous crime of daring to praise or otherwise even highlight the performance of Letchworth girls on a Letchworth blog it seemed clear that sensitivity levels had been ratcheted up to 11 (at least) so it might indeed be a good idea to lay off the more controversial stuff.

Until now.

The regional programme is over, so I am clearly no longer the regional programme manager (except maybe in regard to crossing a few administrative t's). The county season is also over and so I am arguably no longer county manager either (indeed the job has now been advertised). So none of the above constraints now apply. And all the stuff I have been diligently drafting can now come out.

Why here, you may ask?

Well, where else do you suggest? I somehow don't see the pages of Rugby World being opened up to discussions on the structure of junior girls rugby while every other likely (or even unlikely) outlet is, to some extent, an official site and therefore hamstrung by RFU Regulation 5.

But this blog isn't. It is an independent site with no official status, and a reasonable-ish readership. It does stretch the expressed purpose of the site just a bit, but all the subjects that are likely be covered will be relevant to Letchworth, so why not? And if it suggests to the girls the idea that you do not have to accept things as they are - that you can seek to change things that you disagree with - and that a good way of doing that is intelligent open debate, then that would be no bad thing either.