NPC’s intrigue disappearing as focus switches to schools

OPINION: The relevance of New Zealand’s national provincial competition is eroding as the focus switches to schoolboy rugby.

The lack of spectator numbers at provincial games is hardly surprising - in particular in the bigger centres.

The competition is fast losing the selection intrigue it once provided. There is less and less at stake for players now and that naturally has had an effect on the appeal of the competition in many parts of the country.

It was once the competition which the All Black selectors would cast an eagle eye over and from there the country’s top team would be picked.

The advent of professional rugby in 1996 started the change. Through the evolution of professional rugby we got to a point where All Black players take next to no part in the competition.

People became accustomed to that. Of course, there was still the Super Rugby carrot dangling in front of provincial rugby players

to ensure the importance remained.

Provincial rugby was an audition for young New Zealand players who are pushing for the Super Rugby level.

New Zealand’s five Super Rugby coaches would once study provincial rugby intensely before assembling their squads at the end of the provincial competition.

Players, who could play their way in or out of Super teams on the basis of their provincial form,

would steer intensely at their phones on a specific day in November waiting for a call to indicate if they had or had not been picked up by a Super team.

In the meantime, the rugby public would speculate as to who would end up with which team. That has now disappeared as well.

The current contracting environment means the Super Rugby contract list is all but filled for the next season before the provincial competition even starts

in August. Fewer and fewer players are now gaining their Super Rugby shot from what they do at provincial rugby level.

It seems schoolboy rugby is making a play at overtaking provincial rugby in terms of the platform to audition for Super Rugby.

Super Rugby officials are now scouting schoolboy rugby to find their next group of players. The Chiefs signed Damien McKenzie out of Christ’s College and those type of deals are becoming more and more common.

Promising rugby players as young as 15 now require player agents as scouts try to trump everyone else in terms of getting their hands on the best young talent.

By the time players who have obvious Super Rugby potential