Bennett against expansion
Rival test coaches Wayne Bennett and Michael Maguire both believe rugby league needs to prioritise growth at grassroots level before adding teams to the NRL.
Bennett – in New Zealand to coach the Great Britain Lions against Maguire’s Kiwis tonight – is a big advocate of expanding the game’s player base.
Maguire – the Wests Tigers coach who led South Sydney to the NRL title in 2014 – agreed that developing sport’s foundations should be a top priority.
The pair took part in a coaches forum in Christchurch on Thursday where they fielded questions from South Island community coaches.
A panel of six coaches from the two test nations were quizzed about their coaching philosophies and how they develop players.
Canterbury Rugby League chief executive Duane Fyfe, asked their views on expanding Australia’s NRL competition and England’s Super League premiership.
‘‘The problem with expansion is you dilute the product,’’ Bennett said.
‘‘Everyone’s sitting there [in front of TV] with a remote ... there’s about 10 options you can have.
‘‘We’ve all got where we are from the amount of money we take from TV rights. We’ve got to produce a product that they want to see.’’
Bennett said expanding the NRL without ‘‘a lot more work on the grassroots’’ would be a mistake.
‘‘In Australia, I don’t think we can go [from 16] to 18 clubs until we are stronger at the grassroots.’’
He said it would risk turning TV viewers off if games were not competitive.
Bennett would rather see the sport ‘‘put millions into the grassroots and get more people playing the game’’, which would result in the sport becoming stronger at top-level.
He said the Australian Football
League (AFL) competition ‘‘went from 10 to 18 clubs’’, but some had struggled, including ‘‘one that hasn’t got off the bottom’’ of the table.
Maguire agreed with Bennett that the sport had to ‘‘do a lot more with our grassroots’’ before expanding at the highest level.
The Australian-born Maguire is passionate about growing the Kiwis’ player base, saying there were ‘‘so many kids playing in New Zealand and Australia that can [potentially] play in a Kiwis jersey’’.
‘‘We want to be able to expand our programmes to get more kids in a Kiwi jersey.’’
Maguire is also a strong advocate of developing Kiwi coaches. He has Kiwis and Warriors legend Stacey Jones as an assistant and World Cup winning Kiwis captain Nathan Cayless is also around the group.
The community coaches – including a couple from the West Coast – hung on the test mentors’ every word.
Bennett’s dry sense of humour was displayed when he described coaching as ‘‘an endurance event, not a one-night stand’’.
He also raised a laugh when he claimed players were free to ‘‘listen to some kind of music I hate’’ in their free-time, but ‘‘they are not going to listen to music I hate when we’re training.’’