New shorter competition next year
11 week round robin plus finals planned for Baywide rugby
The 2021 Baywide rugby season is still going, but already the structure of next season's competition has been decided. Bay of Plenty Rugby Union's Senior Club Working Group has decided on the basic concept for the 2022 senior men's competition.
The 12 best teams across the region will play one round of rugby followed by a finals series to decide the Baywide champions.
Bay of Plenty Rugby Union board member and working group chairman Craig Sandlant said last year's Covid-shortened season provided some guidance.
“We learned that our players want a significantly shorter season than the current 20 week format, our players want to play more local rugby and our players want to play in a Baywide competition that pits them against the best in the region,” he said. “This new format ticks all three boxes.
“The working group has been working on concepts and formats for the best part of 18 months. There's still a lot of detail that needs to be finalised and we will continue talking with our players, coaches and other rugby stakeholders, but at least all our clubs went into last week's round one action with absolute clarity as to what they need to do to be playing Baywide Premier rugby next year.”
The major changes to next year's format include an 11 week round robin with finals meaning at least a five week shorter season. There will be no requirement for the premier clubs to have their second team following their premier team.
“This enables more local rugby to be played, especially if the premier team is playing out of the sub union.”
The shortened Baywide competition allows for sub unions to organise a local round of competition before the Baywide round, and it leaves plenty of room to reinvigorate representative teams after the Baywide competition is finished.
“The working group also understands that clubs are concerned that shortening a season reduces potential revenue from clubs with there being fewer home games. Whilst this maybe true, we want to work more closely with our clubs to identify other opportunities for our clubs to derive income not specifically around being open for home games.
“The union's two new departments; Bayland Recruitment and Education Pathway Trust, are both geared towards supporting our clubs in both recruiting players for them and also retaining them through creating employment and educational opportunities.
“There is still much to do around deciding other areas of this new format, most importantly, the promotion and relegation detail, all of which will be sorted during the rest of this year.”