This is a bit of a tangent but these guys absolutely need to be playing Super Rugby in their early 20s if they are really aspiring to be stars. We (collectively) say that young players need to be held back and not exposed to high level rugby too soon but then lament that the guys we are playing against from the Northern Hemisphere have a huge amount more professional games of experience at a similar age.
It's absolutely true that these guys starting their career playing in a bad team have a tougher time of it but they also need to be playing.
My issue is that there is just not enough high level game time for all the players to be developing from period, and that if you have 20 year olds running around what does that say about your player development when you have no 21-35 year olds still pushing for the positions?
We have 14 regular season games. Gallagher Premiership has 18, URC 18, Top14 26. They also 70%+ of those teams competing in Champions or Challenger Cup so another 4-8 matches.
We don't have a NPC or Currie Cup where the players can be getting reasonably high level, quality game time.
I bemoan the loss of players like Sione Tuipulotu, but the truth is he'd probably never have been the player he is now without playing in a system that afforded him so much more development and game time at a high standard.
Hopefully when RA resolves their books they can turn their focus from surviving to some actual strategies around how to move forward.
