Televised under- 21 comp a platform for late bloomers
A new club rugby competition hopes to showcase some of the country’s best young talent — and possibly find the next All Blacks great.
As clubs around the country come to terms with a disrupted season due to the Covid- 19 pandemic, as well as rising financial pressures and dwindling participation numbers, 19 clubs across the three Auckland unions have come together to develop a new club and communityled competition to give a platform to young players around the city.
The competition i s called the Super Club Rugby Under- 21 Championship, a four- week tournament featuring four Auckland regions: the West Rangers, Central Kings, East Toa Moana and Southside Rising.
The Super Club Rugby Under- 21s kicks off on October 8 and will be broadcast live on Sky Sport, with a double- header each Thursday. Each team plays the other once, with the top two advancing to the October 29 grand final for the newly- minted Sir Michael Jones Trophy.
Tournament director Tony Lafotanoa says the competition is an opportunity to showcase some of the hidden gems in New Zealand rugby, while presenting young players with an opportunity for representative experience.
“The focus is for the clubs to use their opportunity with their players to give them some representative experience, to help with the club’s recruitment and also to help the clubs just become more resilient in these uncertain times,” Lafotanoa says.
“And obviously with Covid having cut the season short — and actually it cut the middle of it out as well — it’s become a real light of hope for many clubs as they try to stay in front of the minds and hearts of our players to come back to club rugby next year. Especially those at schools that they can see now that there’s a fantastic opportunity through their clubs to be involved with this Super Club Rugby Under- 21s Championship.”
The competition hopes to “restore the mana” of club rugby, and maybe even discover the next hidden talent in New Zealand rugby, like All Black Brodie Retallick, who was passed over after First XV only to be discovered at a small rugby club.
The competition is the brainchild of Lafotanoa, a passionate advocate of club rugby who decided — with the help of several big names in the rugby community — to develop a competition that gives young players an opportunity to test their skills against some of the best in Auckland on a televised stage.
“This is a good shot in the arm to help restore mana and pride in playing club rugby,” says Lafotanoa. “And recognising that it has a very important position in the journey and life of a rugby player. We want to make club rugby great again.
“One of the things that became obvious to me was there’s a lack of tribalism that has always been there, and we’ve seen it in the past, that can be reignited again. And the way I looked at it was instituting a geographical competition based on the clusters of clubs in Ta ¯ maki Makaurau that sit in certain areas of Auckland.”
Many of the players involved will be those who have missed out on the one- track road to professional rugby: from First XV to rugby academies, to provincial teams or Super Rugby.
But as countless examples show, not every player develops at the same rate or follows the same trajectory towards rugby success — which gives competitions like the this a platform for the forgotten many in the crowded rugby scene.
Perhaps the most significant example of this is All Blacks superstar Retallick, who has been one of the world’s best players for a decade.
After bafflingly getting passed on by the Canterbury system following his time in the Christchurch Boys’ High First XV, Retallick moved to Hawke’s Bay to continue his career in club rugby.
He eventually landed at the Central Hawke’s Bay Rugby Club, where he was discovered by then-Hawke’s Bay coach Tom Coventry — and would quickly become one of the most dominant locks in the sport.
“It’s amazing Canterbury hadn’t picked him up because they seem to be quite skilled at picking up anybody else,” says Central Hawke’s Bay Rugby Club patron and former president Peter Fleming.
“He epitomises leaving school, going to a small country club, and proving at all levels that he was an All Black of the future. And it didn’t take him very long to reach that level.
“Last season, he had a game for us and he always comes back. He’s a great, loyal club man.”
Fleming believes the current First XV system can create unrealistic expectations for students — and often leaves many late bloomers behind amid the country’s crowded churn of talent.
“They come out with high expectations out of college rugby and that’s been made worse, dare I say it, by First XV rugby being on TV. It’s given them a false sense of a future and a false expectation of where they go from school.”
Fleming says there are other players like Retallick out there who may not have been picked up by academies: “These boys who develop a bit later need to be still nurtured by their local community.”
“The other really classic example, and a brilliant one that’s resonated for us out west, i s DJ Forbes,” says Lafotanoa. “DJ Forbes wasn’t a schoolboy star as such, he wasn’t in any elite programme or picked up early, but what he was as history unfolded was the epitome of someone who developed late, but in those ensuing years, worked on his skill sets, fitness, conditioning and maturity, and when he came of age, the rest is history — he went on to lead New Zealand and is one of the most successful All Blacks Sevens captains in history. That’s a wonderful example of the kind of players we want to help support and will be given that opportunity in this championship.”