By Ian Todd
June 3 2012
The second tier of English Rugby is called the Championship and consists of 12 clubs hungry to be denied promotion to the Premiership on the basis of a foolish league structure and an unfair set of admission criteria. The unsponsored Championship sees each team playing 11 games, home and away, in a league format before the futile drama of the play-offs begins.
Championship clubs also compete in the British & Irish Cup which in 2011/12 includes six sides from the Welsh Principality Premiership, Irish sides Munster, Leinster and Ulster and three Scottish sides.