Club competition younger than ever
OPINION: Taranaki’s premier club rugby competition might be just starting for the season but a fortnight in and it’s getting tough to find the diamonds in the rough.
The diamonds are those players who could easily establish themselves in a Taranaki squad.
While the quality of players in the club competition has been diluting for years, 2017 appears to have set a new standard.
Look at some of the names who are missing from last year’s competition, players like Lachlan Boshier, David Ormrod, Liam McBride, Codey Rei, Toa Halafihi, Stephen Perofeta, Jesse Parete, Harry Jones, Mitchell Brown, Berny Hall, Mike Kainga and Johnny Fai’auli. You get the picture. While Super Rugby has sucked the air out of club competition’s across the country, there is also another significant problem associated with the decline in quality. Players simply are not staying in the game.
Browse through the majority of squads in Taranaki and you really struggled find anyone over the age of 30.
In fact, from what I’ve seen so far, a few clubs must be busy postmatch checking the ID’s of a lot of players to see if they could buy a beer.
No longer are any half decent players allowed a breather from first XV to adjust to club life through a colts environment.
If you are good enough, you are in the premier side.
The one benefit these boys do have now is that they are not going to put through the same sort of tactics and cheap shots from decades ago because the game played a lot cleaner with the absence of so many veterans.
There does not seem to be a clear solution to the problem, either.
The Taranaki union, in a very large way, has been the victim of its own success.
Continually making the semifinals of the Mitre 10 Cup, another heavily diluted competition, has seen Taranaki’s players become more and more attractive to Super Rugby coaches who are allowed bigger and bigger squads.
If that’s not all, the next tier of players are often taken out of club rugby to work in development programmes for Super Rugby franchises. Club rugby should continue to play a role in the dynamic of a community who share the values of team work and club ethos but you must wonder how much longer the current model is sustainable.
Look at New Plymouth Old Boys, one of the most successful clubs in Taranaki and it can not field a colts side.
In fact, the number of players who were putting their hand up to play could be counted on that same very hand.
At the moment there are far more people involved in junior rugby than there are at senior level.
Taranaki Rugby’s recent annual report said there had been a 2.5 per cent increase in registered club players.
I’m not questioning the figure, I’m just wondering where they are?
The report also said there had been a 5 per cent increase in players aged between 13 and 20.
That’s fantastic but how do we keep them in the game?
glenn.mclean@dailynews.co.nz