Buchan backs series

Press, 31 March 1989, Page 40

Buchan backs series

By 808 SCHUMACHER Although the Auckland captain, Gary Whetton, feels that the South Pacific series might have outlived its usefulness, Canterbury’s captain for the last two championship campaigns, John Buchan, considers it still has an important place on the rugby calendar. Whetton said that Jie felt the series, which involves a round-robin of matches between Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury, Queensland, New South Wales and Fiji, was proving to be too heavy a load for players.

The established All Black lock said that the series had improved Auckland’s game and had sharpened the fitness and form of players, but he thought the series placed an extra burden on Auckland players. "This is my opinion, and the opinion of some of the other guys as well. You have to ask whether we need all this rugby. The last thing we need is to play Wellington and Canterbury at this stage, and I

wouldn’t be surprised if they felt that the last thing they needed was to play us.” Whetton questioned whether it would be better to revert to playing only New South Wales and Queensland as happened when he started playing for Auckland in 1980. Buchan, a member of the Canterbury team which won the inaugural championship three years ago and its captain in 1987 and last season, said yesterday that he still looked forward to the series and hoped it would continue.

“It might be true that a heavier burden is being put on players but then there is nothing like high pressure, high quality matches to improve your own game. "I’d be disappointed if the series fell by the wayside. I think it has a lot to recommend when you are playing against some of the best provincial sides in the world,” he said.

Buchan, who is in the Canterbury squad for this year’s series, said that a lot of young players had

benefited from competing in the championship and this experience had been to Canterbury’s advantage later in its programme. “The championship has been invaluable for blooding many of the younger guys,” he said. • Administrators, not players, will have to decide the future of the championship, the Wellington coach, Alan Muir, said yesterday.

While he was reluctant to comment on the merits of the tournament, Mr Muir, according to a Press Association report, said that the top players from Auckland, Wellington, and Canterbury were lucky to play a club game in a season.

He agreed, however, that the championship had proved especially valuable to him last year. “For me there were a lot of sound benefits that came out of it last year. We certainly came out of the tournament stronger than when we went in. But it depends on what each team wants to get out of the tournament.”