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Rowers doing off-season training and fulfilling sports obligations to the school?

I think you're overcomplicating a simple concept. Forget a finals series, forget a draft. We're dealing with amateur players, it's not intended to be semi-professional. It's not intended to be a permanent replacement for the NRC. 3 weeks of amateur rugby that's all. Keeping simple minimises...

If the NRC goes as predicted, we could do a lot worse than have a knockout tournament involving the top 4 plus the Brisbane grand finalists the Canberra premiers and the Melbourne premiers and possibly the Perth premiers

Warringah 47 Eastwood 47 Norths 46 Uni 45 A clear top 4 and from what I’ve seen this year the premiers will come from this group. Then follow fighting it out for 5th and 6th Gordon 38 Manly 37 Easts 37 Further back the next group who would seem out of contention. Souths 31 Randwick 27 Wests...

Full results for the round Eastwood def Manly 40-24 Souths def Randwick 34-19 Norths def Warringah 25-10 Uni def WSTB 38-7 Gordon def Wests 36-12 Easts bye

Getting back to the rugby. I watched the 2nd half of Norths v Warringah. Enjoyed the contest. Disappointing that Manly again collapsed in the 2nd half. We won the first half 21-20 and lost the 2nd half 3-20. It's been a recurring theme in 2019.

Then why did you watch it? Very strange that you (a) bothered to watch a match you clearly didn't enjoy and (b) decided to waste more of your time by coming on here and making inflammatory comments. And people wonder why rugby in Australia is such a mess.

Again, you're falling into the trap which is peculiar to rugby discussions - everything is a binary all or nothing argument. You talk of school v club as if it's some sort of competition between the two and that only one of them can provide an elite pathway. With respect, such limited thinking...

It's actually worse because at least in the school situation parents are out of the equation, whereas in the set-up you describe it's quite often run by a couple of aspirational parents. Trying to pick winners/champions at this age is fraught with problems, we should be exposing the widest...

Norths v Warringah from North Sydney Oval. Now there was a ground which used to have even less grass than Manly Oval back in the old days. The various Norths clubs in league, union, soccer, Aussie Rules and hockey all used to play home games there.

Australian Schoolboys rugby team? A bit more prestigious than a piece of cake? It was the former ARU which did away with club-based junior national teams. We used to pick an U16s Australian team which had an annual match against NZ and we used to pick and U19s Australian team which also played...

Nobody is saying that the academies shouldn't exist, nor that there shouldn't be a club-based pathway for player development. It should be the main pathway as I've always said. What is being pointed out is the way it has been set up it makes the Australian Schools Championships a lesser event...

Yes I remember the days when the oval was a quagmire in the wet. All teams used to train there (including juniors) so by about June there was barely a blade of grass on the field. The drainage is much better now and it's only used for training by the 1sts/2nds once a week maximum so the...

Do the club and school pathways lead to different places?

It isn't, there's nothing wrong with club-based pathways. There should always be a pathway for boys not at school, but that isn't what's being discussed. It's possible, in fact perfectly normal in most sports, to have a club-based pathway but to still have a representative programme for boys...

It seems very confusing and it does seem to invalidate the whole concept of school championships. I'm sure that the people running the game know best.

All of them? The maths of that doesn't add up if there are also some early school-leavers in the team? Maybe I'm the only one that finds it worrying that WA Schools are sending teams to RL schoolboy championships and not RU ones. Maybe there's nothing to worry about and RA have everything...

Promises to be something of a sticky wicket, we've had two days of steady rain on the beaches (pelting down as I type), with rain forecast for tomorrow as well. I suspect that 3rds and 4ths might be moved to Keirle Park and possibly 2nds as well. Otherwise there would be a glue pot in the...

With isolated exceptions, I agree.

But I notice that there is a Western Australia team competing at the Australian Rugby League U15s schoolboy championships in Brisbane at the moment (an presumably there will also be a league team in the open schools league). Worrying, very worrying.