What?s the best way forward for Wellington club rugby?

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The following is an opinion piece written by Club Rugby news and story contributor Scott MacLean:

It’s become something that’s as certain as night following day; the end of the club season being accompanied by calls to review the structure of Wellington’s Premier and Senior club competitions.

The current structure has been in place for 20 years, following a period of club amalgamations that created Northern United, Old Boys-University and Hutt Old Boys-Marist.

Reports since the Premier finals day three weeks ago has a number of the WRFU’s Club Coaching Co-ordinator Officers proposing an expansion of the Swindale Shield from the current 12 teams to 14.

The Hardham Cup would be restructured so that ‘B’ teams are excludedwhich would effectively guarantee the other two spots to clubs whose senior side is outside the ‘top 14’. Such a structure would create a situation where 8 teams would be vying for 6 places in the Premier competition each year.

Scott Waldrom, coach of former Premier side Avalon; and Murray Mexted, Director of Rugby at the newly-promoted Wellington Axemen, have both come out in support of the proposal - each with their own reasons.

Almost every club in Wellington would like to have a team at that top-level. But how realistic is that?

From a competitive standpoint few would argue that the Jubilee Cup is probably the toughest club rugby competition in New Zealand.An 11-week competition to firstly sort the wheat from the chaff; then pitting the best against each other for seven more weeks before the playoffs.

Only Canterbury has a similar structure with their Christchurch Metro competition, and that only runs 5 weeks. Auckland’s Gallaher Shield is simply a three-week eight-team knockout at the end of a full 15-club round-robin.

Since 2006 12 different clubs have played in the Jubilee Cup round at least once and only three - Petone, Hutt Old Boys-Marist and Marist St Pats - have been there in every one of those eight years. Even the first round Swindale Shield has been won (or shared) by five different clubs in that span – Norths, Petone, HOBM, MSP and Tawa, so the issue isn’t quality or competitiveness at the top end.

Rather the issue is below that. Only once has a club made the step up from Senior 1 to Premier and sustained it beyond two seasons - Wainuiomata in 2006 ending a 19-year exile from the top flight.

Johnsonville, Avalon, and Rimutaka have all been promoted in recent seasons, finished in12th spot, with only Rimutaka able to return to the Swindale for the following season.

While in any competition someone has to finish at the bottom the record of teams that have occupied that position in the Swindale Shield from 2006 onwards has been poor to say the least:

?? ?Played: 88?? ?Won: 4?? ?Lost: 84?? ?For: 923?? ?Against: 4412

That’s an average score of 10-50. If you take out Rimutaka, that average score improves slightly to 13-43.

It isn’t much better for the one club that is seemingly perennially on the brink - Western Suburbs.

Since 2006 the Roosters have qualified for the Jubilee Cup once (in 2007) and while they haven’t finished last, they’ve finished either 10th or 11th in the last four years with their record in that time a sorry P44 W8 L35 D1. The average scoreline in those games has been 17-35, with many defeats far heavier than that.

It’sof note that their only two Swindale wins came against Rimutaka and an OBU side weakened by players away on NZ Universities duty, and in the Hardham Cup against they lost to Wellington and Johnsonville and barely beat OBU’s second side, all teams from the Senior 1 grade.

On the flip side, it could be argued that this has perhaps been one of the most competitive seasons in recent times in Wellington. If ranked by order of where they finished in the competitions at seasons end the top 18 teams come from 16 different clubs, but Rimutaka’s record of 0-18 in 2013 stands out like a sore thumb.

Is there the depth of talent to support 12 teams in Wellington, let alone 14? The records of the teams at the bottom end of the Swindale Shield would argue that thereisn’t, unless what there is now is spread more thinly. Would that improve the overall standard, or just lower it?

Add the expansion of Super Rugby; which has seen players like Upper Hutt’s Jason Woodward and Wests’ Scott Fuglistaller take up opportunities in Melbourne; and other Premier-level players take up deals in places like Germany, Romania and the UK, the players who would have in the past normally been playing in Wellington competitions aren’tthere. That has diluted the player base.

Oriental-Rongotai used more than 50 different players this season, including the late-season cameos of Ma’a Nonu and Julian Savea. Wellington used nearly 40 in their successful quest to return to Premier status and most clubs would have similar numbers. It’s an extremely physical game at the top level in Wellington, and injuries take their toll as well.

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The other argument is that the Premier competition is actually reduced. Often those teams at the bottom end of the Swindale Shield are cited as proof that contraction is what’s needed. However, someone will finish bottom and lose the majority of their games.

In 2009 Waikato decided to move from a 12-team Premier competition to a 10-team one from 2011. While some of this was purely practical in order to fit the competition in before the ITM Cup, it was also intended to increase the level of the competition.

The record of the teams finishing bottom in the last two years - Hinuera and Te Rapa –is a very sorry 1-35, and while Hinuera were relegated after 2012, Te Rapa have retained their place for 2014 following the promotion-relegation matches at the end of the season. The clubs that were forced out of their Premier competition in the contraction have struggled to get back in. ?

One of the beauties of the Wellington competition structure is that teams find out if they’re good enough for the top flight across the long haul, rather than having their fate determined in a one-off match or a series of three games. That might be cold comfort for Johnsonville, who the last two years have come up short. They must find the fact that Wests are still a Premier side and they aren’t, despite beating them comfortably in the Hardham Cup this year, particularly galling.

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It is Waldrom’s and Mexted’s own comments that provide the answers to the problem. It does come down to the hard graft for clubs to build their identity and player base and while it is harder for the non-Premier clubs to do that, it can be done.

As examples, how did Wainuiomata feel about seeing the best players from the valley, like Tana Umaga, Neemia Tialata and Piri Weepu, heading over the hill to play Premier rugby for Petone and HOBM in that period from 1987 to 2006? They built a team, got themselves promoted back into Premier, won a pair of Hardham Cups and in 2012 made the Jubilee Cup semi-finals for the first time. Below that they also now have teams in both the Senior 1 and Senior 2 grades, something few other clubs can boast.

There is Ories; who although they haven’t been outside of Premier, they finished 11th in the Swindale in 2006. The team that year included players like Donal McNamara, Eddie and Peme Leiutana and Paulo Aukuso and within two years would also add the likes of Whetu Henry, Pau Halafihi and Dan Reddish, all of whom would be part of their Jubilee Cup winning team in 2011. Their academy, established in 2010, provides more talent for the club as well as a pathway for players coming out of the nearby colleges.

One wonders just what efforts Avalon and Wellington made when their fortunes were in free-fall to address them, rather than the predicament they’ve found themselves in. Similar questions can probably be asked of Wests at present as well.

In Avalon’s case they should probably be asking themselves just why it is that talent from Naenae and Taita, whoseareas the club sits in, choose to play for HOBM rather than them? Have they even asked the players from those schools?

The answer seems to lie in the investment that HOBM has made in making links with those schools, as other clubs have done across the province. I refereed the College Premier 2 semi-final between Hutt Valley HS and St Bernard’s, and amongst the spectators were senior coaches from Petone, HOBM, and Wainuiomata.

It is a case of reaping what you sow.

Wellington is somewhat unique amongst New Zealand’s provincial unions, and what works elsewhere won’t necessarily work here. It has only 18 constituent clubs, far fewer than other unions similar in population like Waikato, the Bay of Plenty and Canterbury, who all have upwards of 30.

Its population density is far greater and the travelling distance between clubs is measured in minutes rather than hours - which means that players are often spoilt for choice in who they turn out for, rather than having their local club as the only reasonable option.

I hope that the WRFU’s Rugby Board elects to maintain the current competition structure because it does provide a great mix of competition and the avenue for clubs to make their way to the top table if they’re good enough, and isn’t that what a really competitive competition structure should do?