From page 1 // A winter of discontent for rugby in Taranaki

But he’s not complaining.

‘‘I love what I’m doing, he says. ‘‘We’ve had challenges we’ve had to work through because of injuries, but I’m proud of the way the boys handled that and have gone out and tried their hardest.’’

Having a lot of players out injured puts pressure on the team. However, there are still positives, because it has been good for developing players and players who played club rugby spent time with the team, which is good for the Bulls and good for the clubs, he says.

A positive person, Rickards reckons he hasn’t thought about throwing in the towel.

‘‘I’m working with a team I care about. I don’t want to leave until they’re in a better place.’’

And having two children aged under 3 means lack of sleep has nothing to do with the job. It can be tough not taking work home, he says. But he tried to wait until the children were in bed before pulling out the laptop.

There are rumours some players have received abusive phone calls, but Rickards hasn’t.

‘‘I certainly try to stay off certain (social media) platforms because that’s certainly there, but I haven’t heard of abusive phone calls. That’s unacceptable. People want to voice their feelings, but if that’s right I’m very disappointed.’’

Once the review is finished he will carefully go over its findings, he says. Then he will look forward to a successful year next year.

Most evidence puts the lack of support by fans down to the stadium situation, rather than the teams woeful results.

And Grant Hassall, who has been the supporters club president for seven years, says he can understand why fans stayed away.

The club’s members are used to watching from the sidelines, some nights were very cold and having to stand for an extended period is not a comfortable experience for a lot of people, he says.

‘‘Most of them would be Sky subscribers and watching it from your own home would be quite appealing. So, I don’t begrudge anyone who took that option, but hopefully a solution can be found quickly.

‘‘I don’t think the crowd sizes will be impacted that significantly by the demotion to the championship division. You have a lot of crossover games with teams from the premiership anyway, so we’re still likely to see the best in the premier competition fronting up.’’

While Hassall views the year as the ‘‘winter of discontent’’ he doesn’t think people in Taranaki are losing interest in rugby.

‘‘No, the popularity of rugby is as strong as it ever has been.’’

And the statistics back that up. In 2018 there were 7036 registered player, 441 registered coaches and 65 referees, which equals 6.4 per cent of the 118,000 people in the province – the highest participation rates in the country.

The women’s game grew 11 per cent and there was a 15 per cent increase in the number of coaches.

And contrary to the national trend, where most provinces were losing numbers, Taranaki teenage registrations grew 4 per cent.

But dairy farmer Dave Dent, who has been coaching schoolboy rugby for 30 years, doesn’t think the reality is that impressive.

‘‘I don’t think there has been an increase at all. The numbers they quote you are registered numbers. I don’t see that on the ground.’’

Dent believes rugby has some real challenges at amateur level.

‘‘We can’t be too critical of the professional stuff, we are world champions. It’s working at that end. We need to put more pride and more value into our amateur rugby.

‘‘The club thing has really fallen away and 99 per cent of us are only ever going to play club rugby, or high school rugby and we should be proud of that.’’

Players need to be reassured it doesn’t matter at what level they reach, as long as they are putting in the hard yards, he says

‘‘You don’t have to play for the All Blacks or the Bulls. If you have given it 100 per cent and added value to the team, be proud of that.’’

And people needed to be realistic about much value the Bulls players added.

‘‘I don’t want to be critical, but there’s all the excuses in the world, the earthquake thing, injuries, people aren’t supporting them. The players need to be accountable. Why aren’t they playing better? They get paid plenty.’’

Parkinson believes the Bulls will play better next year.

They have a strong roster, the confidence they’ll be competitive in the Championship and they’ll be aiming for a home semi and home final.

‘‘We believe rugby is what you do on a Saturday in winter in this region. The community game is at record levels,’’ he says. ‘‘We need to galvanise that support to get behind the team next year. But it’s not just next year. It’s going to be a number of years to work our way out of this financial situation. We need our supporters to stay loyal and stay behind us.’’