2015 NRC Barbarians Watch

[Micheal]

Defensive organisation is the big thing in these rep games - team has to come together in a couple of weeks and attack will work pretty well with a few simple moves, and a couple of big boppers, but alignment and communication takes time.

Is Heartland really just 3rd Div any more? I realise ITM has expanded to have the Premiership/Championship thing, but a couple of 2nd Div NPC provinces did effectively move down, did they not?

In any case, those thinking an ITM XV would have been a better match:

It would be a slaughter for our blokes.

We'll get there. The ITM is a institution in NZ - the players who play ITM have been playing it for years. They've come up against Super XV players regularly and are much better for it.

Our competition is still in its infancy stages. Of course, 10 years down the track, the ITM team will still probably beat a NRC XV, but the gap will be far, far smaller. Our boys will get better through the exposure to Super players, everything else will come to demographics and the dominance of the sport over there.

 

[waiopehu oldboy]

Is Heartland really just 3rd Div any more? I realise ITM has expanded to have the Premiership/Championship thing, but a couple of 2nd Div NPC provinces did effectively move down, did they not?.

Kinda. There are 27 provincial Unions in NZ & the last iteration of the NPC was three divisions of nine so you could argue that four have dropped from Div 1 (Premiership) & 2 (Championship) to 3 (Heartland) with the numbers not adding up due to the amalgamation of Nelson Bays & Marlborough as Tasman. The four would be King Country, Waiarapa Bush, South Canterbury & Thames Valley IMO: the first three all spent time in Div 1 & TV were always up there in Div 2.

The counter-argument to the above is that there are now just 14 Unions who can (in some cases just barely) finance a fully pro team & 12 who cannot. Some years ago NZRU tried to demote some of the financial strugglers (Northland, Tasman, Manawatu, Southland & Hawkes Bay) from ITM to a reborn Div2 with the better-resourced Heartland Unions but some of the big Unions e.g. Canterbury, Otago & Waikato (but oddly enough not Wellington or Auckland) said NFW.

Nowadays most ITM Unions are in the black (albeit Otago needed an NZRU bailout & the likes of Manawatu & Bay of Plenty have come close to needing one) so whether by good luck, good management, or most likely a combination of the two, the current model is working.

 

[Ozee316]

I would like to see the tour next year take the form of 2 Mid-week games played on Wednesday evenings during October in alternate countries - NZ 2015 and Australia 2016.

Put a Trans Tasman trophy up for grabs like the Bledisloe.

The respective competitions could take a 1 week break to accommodate the two match tour.

Both countries choose non Super rugby contracted players. In NZ a couple of players from each 3 divisions would be best.

It could get good TV ratings because there is nothing else on that time of year.

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