Complete reappraisal of club rugby suggested

Press, 20 September 1978, Page 18

Complete reappraisal of club rugby suggested

By

KEVIN McMENAMIN

It is that time of year again when the thoughts of many young, and not so young, rugby men turn to ways of changing the senior format. In recent years the exercise has been as coi..mon as the dismantling of goal posts. And this year is no different At least two clubs have schemes down on paper and the Canterbury Rugby Union has made its annual response by asking its competitions committee to have a report ready by the end of next month. The union, from experience, can be sure of one thing: it will never be able to please all the clubs and it might even find that the majority will settle for the status quo. There is a wide body of opinion that if 16 senior teams are to be retained the present system is as good as any. Nevertheless, this is unlikely to deter those who argue that the grade would be far more appealing if broken into sections with various modifications on promotion-relegation lines. j , Nearly all the proposals

of this and past years just tinker with the formats in use. It is, perhaps, not surprising that one of quite radical change should originate from one of the more colourful figures of Christchurch club rugby, the University A coach, Mr Laurie O’Reilly. However, Mr O’Reilly wears a number of rugby

hats and his deep attachment to the game was reflected in his appointment this year as regional advisory coach for the New Zealand union. Furthermore, his ideas are not without merit For a start, Mr O’Reilly contends that a complete reappraisal is needed of traditional attitudes to club rugby. He believes that it is no longer the heart and soul of the game in this country, ah though administrators still pay a lip service to such a view.

For better or for worse — and it could be for better — he says that prtivin-

cial rugby, with its many off-shoots such as underage sides and Maori sides is the most important level of the sport. They are the games that attract the most interest and with more provincial sides travelling, particularly to Australia, the trend can only increase. If this is accepted, then

a whole new look should be taken of club rugby and a format devised that meets its needs, says Mr O’Reilly. r “The top players in representative teams have to be looked after and so, too, do those of lesser station.” Mr O’Reilly speaks from harsh personal experience when he laments the encroachments representative football make on club play. At one time this year he was trying to prepare his University A team for the latter rounds of the main championship with nine players com” mitted to training with other teams. ’

“I think it is significant that New Brighton (the club champion) was not affected to anything like this extent and it was able to work at developing a style of play,” said Mr O’Reilly. He says that New Brighton was a deserving champion, but he does not rate it the best team in the grade. Mr O’Reilly proposes a short, sharp club championship, designed around the representative programme. He would also like to see country teams included and his starting point format is eight teams — the top four town teams of the previous season and the top two from the country gaining automatic entry, with an early-season qualifying series being held to find the last two. A full round-robin would then be played, spread over the season so as to ensure no clashes with representative fixtures, and then the top two teams meeting in a grand final. At the same time, Mr O’Reilly does not intend that club players be left short of football. To this end he strongly supports a much greater

emphasis on the “fixtures” system, which he has observed first-hand in the United Kingdom. Under this scheme, clubs negotiate home and away games themselves with country or neighbouring union clubs. Such games, he says, should not lack competitiveness, but their greatest virtue was the after-match sociability. “From my own experience I know that a day” trip into the country for a town team can be one of the happiest experiences that rugby has to offer,” he said. Mr O’Reilly suggests that the Canterbury union could stage supplementary competitions, which clubs could enter if they wished. These could take the form of mini-leagues, a night championship and seven-a-sides. All these entries would be taken a the start of the season and clubs would be able to plan their programmes well in advance.

The four main advantages of the scheme are seen by Mr O’Reilly as being: (1) a true club champion would be found; (2) players would get a break from the hard grind

of 17 or 18 straight weeks of tough competition; (3) a greater mingling of town and country players; and (4) clubs would have a greater degree of control in giving their players what they wanted.

The scheme does obviously have some rough edges — for example, it is questionable whethe country teams would want to play in a town competition, but at the same time it does meet many of the needs of the times.

A similar, plan was put forward earlier this year by the former All Black captain, Brian Lochore, and it drew a lot of favourable comment. The Lochore scheme was basically that all club football end on July 31 and the last two months of the season be devoted entirely to representative rugby. All over the countiy, club crowds are diminishing and representative ones increasing. It would seem, therefore, that club rugby must be put in its proper perspective and it could be that a scheme something along the lines proposed by Mr O’Reilly might be in the best interests of all concerned.