MEXTED: Australian rugby needs better development system

IRANZ operates under licence in South Africa & is known as The Investec Academy or IRASA. Now into their forth year of operation under the leadership of Dick Muir. They too are starting to produce interesting figures. Mex

Thank you Bakkies! Especially for the bit 'increased their fan base province-wide' Brilliant! The Irish experiment worked. Now all we have to do is wrest control off the east-centric Tah Czars. A quiet revolution still beckons.

WayneO, Mate, stand up and take a bow. Nail. Hit. On. Head. While a new tier under Super Rugby would be great (and desperately needed) its the grassroots where Rugby really needs to focus on improving and vastly expanding. I absolutely agree with your point on schools comps.

On the Gold Coast and in Sydney the finger you should be pointing at is the QRU and the NSWRU. The ARU don't send out development officers it's the state union's responsibility. The Brumbies have taken over part of the development role from the NSWRU by governing southern inland and far South Coast NSW. They are now part of the ACT Rugby structure and get development from the Brumbies. ''Continuing with the kids at club level. We noticed that from about U12, we started to lose players very quickly. In U10 we had 4 teams. By U13 we were down to 2. This year that club has 1 U14 team'' How many of them were lost to GPS, CAS, Southport School or Brisbane schools, etc? There is also subbies rugby below the Shute Shield and other club grades. Plenty of Rugby for players who don't get professional gigs. Don't know the coaching level structure in the ARU. Maybe you need to contact the ARU and look at getting a level two in Qld if you want to continue with coaching. Coaching is about understanding the players skillsets and capabilities. In Ireland you do a mini rugby course than go on to a junior coaching cert at Under 12/13 level. The rules gradually change as you move up a grade. The problem is in Ireland due to the boom of Rugby you get a lot of coaches who have never played Rugby before. It's a completely different beast and physicality level compared to GAA and Soccer. If you don't get it right at mini and junior level you end up with senior players with bad habits.

I would like to make a comment here. I preface this by saying that I am a South African born Australian, having arrived here 20 years ago, at age 21. I also now live in the "black hole wasteland" referred to by Jiggles earlier, otherwise known as the Gold Coast. But I have lived in Sydney for 19 and a half years. That all said, an observation that I have often considered is that the structure to capture players in their formative years in Australia, is fairly week. As a parent who wants their child to play rugby here, you are faced with two options. 1. Send your child to a very expensive private school, where rugby is played and coached with a good support and competition structure or, 2. Join a local club. Due to my personal circumstances, the private school was not an option when my son was U6. So I opted for the 2nd route. We played for a Sydney club on the Northern Beaches from U6 to U13. I also took up a coaching role and got my Level 1 coaches certificate. A note on the coaching certificate, is that it helps with the rules/training drills, but does not do much with assisting you to teach the kids positional play and more specific skills. By U12/U13 I felt that I offered very little to their development and decided to pull out and give more knowledgeable people a shot. This in itself is a weakness in player development here. Many coaches at junior level are not well enough trained (in my humble opinion). We just do it because we love the game. More coaching skill sessions should be made available for all the volunteers that are putting in their time every weekend and weekday evenings. Continuing with the kids at club level. We noticed that from about U12, we started to lose players very quickly. In U10 we had 4 teams. By U13 we were down to 2. This year that club has 1 U14 team. This was not club specific, as we noticed the same pattern across all the clubs that we competed with. By U13, some clubs on the beaches did not even have a team. Many players were lost to rugby league. Rugby league seems to have a much better structure, and the kids see the opportunity to join a senior club when they are older, as there are many sub tiers under the main comp. For union the kids have only the Shute Shield to look forward to. Hardly the same money and incentive. During his years, my son has also played school rugby. The school rugby union has been abysmal. Yes he has not been at the top private schools, but it seems to me that the ARU would be well advised to do some work to develop a school comp. My son now attends a religious based private school that does offer rugby. But the competition is very weak, badly organised, and has no support from the ARU at all. Playing for your school, would be a way of insuring that the kids that bleed out of the local clubs at U13/14 level, continue to play rugby until they are 17/18 years old. In South Africa you were proud to play for your school, and the dream of all the boys generally speaking, was to play for the 1st IV when you reached U16 level. But you were always still proud to represent your school, no matter what team you played for. You also aspired to play for your province (Currie Cup), but you fell back on club rugby after school, if you were not good enough for the next tier, but still enjoyed playing. I absolutely would love to see a strong provincial comp here. But the reality (in my opinion), is that we need to fix it up at a still lower level and build up the foundations, so that we can build, maintain and encourage a young pool of talent. The ARU offers nothing to kids rugby. The club we played for in Sydney got a few tackle bags and some gear bags from the ARU, and perhaps a few balls. I was on the committee for some years in fund raising, and we did it all ourselves. Provide more grass roots support, encourage the development of proper structured school comps (not the local ad hoc 4 or 5 schools nearby that try to play a few games against each other every year), put some funding into local clubs and work on player retention after U13 - maybe then we will have a better pool of players to support a provincial comp. How Australia can reach the level it does without a provincial feeder comp, has got me foxed. Imagine what we could do here with a provincial comp. Support and funding will come if it is given time. This should be seen by the ARU as an investment in the future of the game. The profits will come, but there will probably be some initial financial pain. The Arc was a great idea, but under promoted and so terribly implemented. Don’t let that failure be the excuse to not try again.

'Wow you seem to to know where I live: I wonder how you arrived at that.' You've said that you were 'English' before...

'and the usual suspect winning consistently!?' Saracens and Exeter?

stillmatic1 I only just saw your replies so won't write anything long now as you probably won't read it, suffice to say I don't think I said there were a lot of 1 million plus towns in England with rugby clubs.

It's pretty bloody clear from the one thousandth time that yes, we need another tier. I just don't know how the hell to lobby the ARU enough to get it to prioritise this. This is a LONG TERM problem and we must invest correctly or perish

Apologies for the typos

I think Rugby appreciation in Australia has been limited to people who have played the game at some stage or have been involved with it. Rugby has very little free2air coverage unlike NRL/AFL. Unless families can afford pay tv they receival minimal or no exposure to the code, unlike Aussie Rules and League. So you need to ensure Rugby can get a decent foot-hold in the pulic schools as well as private schools. Their needs to be a development plan that feeds from schools to clubs to provinces and franchises. Most GPS schools are used by not only Super rugby scouts but NRL ones as well. Foxtel are cutting their nose off to spite their face. If one main game involving an Australian Super team was shown live weekly on free2air that would generate wider interest. The ARU have been week in both Junior development linkages and broadcasting rights negotiation. Both these issue need to be addressed for the benefit of Rugby in Australia.

but what else have you won, ramond? this only proves that you can put together 22 men and they are good enough to compete. the same could be said for league in NZ, or cricket in australia. if a WC is all we have got to hang our hats on, then the game at all levels must be fine in australia then!!

are you serious? you contradict your own posts further up when you claim that some english towns have 1 million plus people and strong rugby traditions and thus will support a union team. however, a population centre like the GC that has very little support for union and much much more for AFL, and you claim that it is not ingrained or dominant!! surely having a large number of clubs means there is an available support network compared to if not!! this doesnt necessarily that they are financially sound, but it represents the support for the sport of afl over union. its amazing how with little to no evidence to support your opinions, that you find it weird that they are easily picked apart. and yet still you hold onto them as if a nice warm blanket.

and which championship are you mentioning? aviva, with an average crowd of about 11 thousand? and the usual suspect winning consistently!? not to mention that all but 2 teams are running operating losses in the aviva premiership!! hats off to leicester and northhampton, but what about the rest? simply generating revenue by having 1 or 2 big crowds obviously isnt helping the long term viability of these clubs, and at some point, the debts will be called in. who bails them out, KPM? fact is, the talent/support is simply not there on a sustainable, long term level and infact hasnt shown itself in england at all. how can you claim that the game is spread to a new area and then say they are large areas with strong rugby traditions? cant be new if it has a strong rugby tradition, now can it. and which are these million plus population centres that you speak of? a clubs viability is not simply based on gate takings, it helps of course, but when 2 out of 12 clubs are running at a loss, this is simply poor business. so in reality KPM, your assertion that new talent has been created is simply not right. not in results on the field or off it.

Canberra could only field one team and it has to be a team that represented everyone. The Kookaburras had a historically identity and could of been used

they discussed that 20 years ago and the clubs opposed. Won't happen now. There was a comp recently where the winners of the ACT, NSW and Qld comps played each other. NSW and Qld winners sent scratch side and Tuggers won by default ''Also start by using smaller grounds – 15,000 to 30,000 capacity'' That's what they did in the ARC and they cost a bomb to rent. Grounds like Concord should have been used

Bakkies, If you've got that issue, you need two teams. You need the well-hated, stand-alone team, and you need the amalgamation of everyone else. You need the Tuggeranong Vikings, and you need Canberra. This way, you get a game every weekend, and you get two local derbies a year. An issue with rugby union is that it thinks of sides as rep sides. It doesnt have to be that way.

Bakkies, The NEAFL is the model - a northern and an eastern division of club sides and the reserves of the Super teams, with most games in division and some cross-division. Play the Shute Shield and Hospital Cup finals between the two highest-ranking, non-reserves, sides in each conference. Its a disgrace that the AFL can set up a second tier competition in Queensland and NSW and rugby union cant.

Two things I didn't like about the Canberra team. 1. It was the Canberra Vikings. Most ACT rugby supporters who aren't involved with Tuggeranong despise them. Larkham preferred to play for Wests when he was available rather than running out for the Vikings in the Brisbane comp. The team had to be inclusive and bringing back the Kookaburras would have been a brilliant idea. They got bumper crowds before they were renamed Canberra Vikings. 2. Even from the outside looking in the matches were poorly promoted.

Actually I would have an A team comp running now if the ARC is not possible. It's a joke that the Super Rugby A teams are playing a handful of one off fixtures rather than meaningful matches. Then they are forced in to club rugby which is an even lower level