Ideas for NRC 2015

[kiap]

OK, time for the last team of the week people. What did you see and who stood out? Jono Lance, Allan Ala'alatoa, Samu Kerevi and Jack Debreczeni all got player of the match awards.

Who else should be considererd? Particularly interested in thoughts around fullback, incentre, scrumhalf and the backrow.

Campbell Magnay has to be a shoo in at 13 (I'm guessing you might already have him pencilled in).

At 12 Dave Horwitz looked pretty handy for the Eagles (strong fend on Mitch Lewis to score. Also very good hands when linking and running in attack), although I didn't see the whole game (nor the City-Rams or Rising-Stars).

In the backrow: Sam Figg at No.8, I saw good control with the feet at the back of the scrum for two tries, and got through plenty of work around the park.

Anyway, my 2c worth.

 

[RugbyReg]

Yeah, I'm bordering on being Eagle heavy with Lance there for sure and McKenzie likely. Figg was good as was Horwtiz. Kuate also a strong shot at 3.

Kerevi likely to take Campbell's 13 jersey I'm afraid.

 

[kiap]

Yeah, I'm bordering on being Eagle heavy with Lance there for sure and McKenzie likely. Figg was good as was Horwtiz. Kuate also a strong shot at 3.

Kerevi likely to take Campbell's 13 jersey I'm afraid.

If big Samu is back to his best, then great.

I really dislike the NRC playing matches at the same time which means viewing must be lost. Bump 'em 45 mins each way ARU, please. FFS.

This will join my list of whinges alongside the ARU's need to mandate jerseys to avoid yellowfests.

 

[Brumby Runner]

Isaac Thompson had a very good game at 15 for the Vikings. Not sure how it would compare with others in games I didn't get to see. Magnay was a standout at 13 I thought.

Vikings locks are consistently amongst the best every game, but feature very rarely in GAGR considerations. Rory Arnold has been about the best lock in the comp imo. Not decrying the efforts of a player like Philip who has been a revelation.

 

[RugbyReg]

Isaac Thompson had a very good game at 15 for the Vikings. Not sure how it would compare with others in games I didn't get to see. Magnay was a standout at 13 I thought.

Vikings locks are consistently amongst the best every game, but feature very rarely in GAGR considerations. Rory Arnold has been about the best lock in the comp imo. Not decrying the efforts of a player like Philip who has been a revelation.

Rory will be in the team this week. Thompson won't.

I think you grossly undervalue the performances of the likes of Philip, Staniforth, Neville, Hyne and a few others if you think Arnold was the stand out. He was very good mind you, but not as good as others. But we can save that discussion until I name my team of the tournament in a couple of weeks.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

If big Samu is back to his best, then great.

I really dislike the NRC playing matches at the same time which means viewing must be lost. Bump 'em 45 mins each way ARU, please. FFS.

This will join my list of whinges alongside the ARU's need to mandate jerseys to avoid yellowfests.

My whinges are the revolving door of player selections - don't know what team I am following week to week in some cases.....did lose its appeal for me with the competition with so much of this happening....and seeing the regular thrashing of Sydney based teams.....

 

[Hugh Jarse]

There's a few reasons why rosters have been fluid, revolving door if you like.

It's a World Cup year, and several blokes have been called up for Wallaby/Extended Wallaby Squad duties.

Several players have landed Joker Contracts in the NH after being spotted in Grade Rugby or early NRC games.

Injuries. Team Rehab Selectors have been very active this year.

Rest. RUPA contracts only allow a certain number of matches to be played each season (think it is 30). It is a long year for the top level Pro players especially those with Wallaby committments.

Being World Cup Year, we lost about 10 players to Barbarians Club invitations for RWC warm up games.

Rest. The Western Force Players travel a fair bit during Super Rugby. Perth Spirit (underwritten by Force) usually rest their pro players for their away games. As an aside, their home performances this year (with pro players) has not been stellar, and they have won a game or two while on tour.

Form. Being a development comp, some club players are given a shot at the big show. Some don't get invited back if they are not up to it. Selectors don't always get it right first time around.

Suspensions. About a half dozen blokes have been served up with a Citing Bloke suspension of varying lengths following match video reviews.

All that being said it has been a little frustrating trying to tip the bloody NRC because apart from City and Vikings, performances have varied wildly from week to week in many teams. The Stars started with a twinkling array of rock star players, and got some impressive results before most of these departed the scene leaving them looking and playing like Stars version 2014. Having got early runs on the board they have been rather poor, compared to teams like Eagles and Spirit who seemed to improve as the tournament went on, only to fall agonisingly short of finals qualification. Their active rosters at the end of the season were probably superior to those of the Stars finishing roster, but the competition is for 9 weeks with all games counting before the knockout starts.

Anyhoo, I think all this will be academic as the City and Vikings will march on to the Grand Final leaving the Rising and Stars in their wake like Semi Final road kill.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

There's a few reasons why rosters have been fluid, revolving door if you like.

It's a World Cup year, and several blokes have been called up for Wallaby/Extended Wallaby Squad duties.

Several players have landed Joker Contracts in the NH after being spotted in Grade Rugby or early NRC games.

Injuries. Team Rehab Selectors have been very active this year.

Rest. RUPA contracts only allow a certain number of matches to be played each season (think it is 30). It is a long year for the top level Pro players especially those with Wallaby committments.

Being World Cup Year, we lost about 10 players to Barbarians Club invitations for RWC warm up games.

Rest. The Western Force Players travel a fair bit during Super Rugby. Perth Spirit (underwritten by Force) usually rest their pro players for their away games. As an aside, their home performances this year (with pro players) has not been stellar, and they have won a game or two while on tour.

Form. Being a development comp, some club players are given a shot at the big show. Some don't get invited back if they are not up to it. Selectors don't always get it right first time around.

Suspensions. About a half dozen blokes have been served up with a Citing Bloke suspension of varying lengths following match video reviews.

All that being said it has been a little frustrating trying to tip the bloody NRC because apart from City and Vikings, performances have varied wildly from week to week in many teams. The Stars started with a twinkling array of rock star players, and got some impressive results before most of these departed the scene leaving them looking and playing like Stars version 2014. Having got early runs on the board they have been rather poor, compared to teams like Eagles and Spirit who seemed to improve as the tournament went on, only to fall agonisingly short of finals qualification. Their active rosters at the end of the season were probably superior to those of the Stars finishing roster, but the competition is for 9 weeks with all games counting before the knockout starts.

Anyhoo, I think all this will be academic as the City and Vikings will march on to the Grand Final leaving the Rising and Stars in their wake like Semi Final road kill.

Rest. RUPA contracts only allow a certain number of matches to be played each season (think it is 30). It is a long year for the top level Pro players especially those with Wallaby committments.

Ok that bit helps as Dave Dennis dissappearing from Stars without any reasons or communication was rather dissapointing....

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Rest. RUPA contracts only allow a certain number of matches to be played each season (think it is 30). It is a long year for the top level Pro players especially those with Wallaby committments.

Ok that bit helps as Dave Dennis dissappearing from Stars without any reasons or communication was rather dissapointing..

Yes on Stars.....their performance in latter half poor although they did manage a closer game against Rising last week. Crowds for Stars games a concern - I think we have one too many Sydney teams at this point so Stars / Uni maybe should merge with Rams. As crowds of 400 make for little atmosphere let alone commercially viable. Sydney market very fical and tough sporting market to attract fans compared to other states like Victoria, ACT and QLD who have more active fans who attend sporting games etc. To have nearly half the comp made up of NSW teams probably a bridge too far at this point.

 

[Hugh Jarse]

Crowds across the board have been lower this year, although Brisbane City at home have been streets ahead of the rest. There have been some fairly small crowds at most venues, not just the Stars.

Being a world cup year hasn't helped, with most of the focus of the rugby world on things happening in the UK, and the build up to that, but what else was the ARU going to do?

Not run the competition because crowds will be down? Play the NRC over the summer when the Glorious Wallabies will be back along with Bill, and the Super Rugby Players will be either on rest breaks or in full on preseason mode, along with the Under 20's?

Unlike ARC, this time they are in for the long haul and there is another 3 years to go for this competition to establish its place in the sporting landscape. Hopefully the franchises have sufficient financial resources to last the distance.

Cutting the Sydney Franchise numbers by 1 limits the opportunities for players like The Prince of Ballymore to be discovered. 18 year old Guy Porter wouldn't have had the opportunity to be been mistaken for Tom Kingston if there was only 3 NSW NRC teams.

Arguably Harry Jones would still be considered just a good Shute Shield player for the Rats. The NH Rays didn't want him this year.

How are we going to select a solid NRC Barbarians side if we only have teams full of rock star players? Vikings and BCity really set the NRC alight this year but not many of their players made the Barbarians team for a good reason, they're mainly all on existing pro contracts.

I think we should be looking to tinker with franchise numbers and distributions after year 4.

 

[Jagman]

Surely the semi finals this week will prove that the comp has some serious player distribution issues. I'm not sure what would fix it but noticed the City coach made a reference to the fact their team was not just the Hunts and Kerevis but the club players that worked so hard to make the team play well. I'll bet they have BUT... Surely the Reds staff have a clue how to divide these teams evenly and I saw his comment as trying to suggest that the City team is not "stacked". Which after two seasons now I find even harder to believe. The other Reds team came second last and the whole problem with the lopsided nature of the comp is supposed to be that NSW have 1 too many teams. How many teams of City and Vikings quality can Australia actually run out? I'd suggest that it couldn't nearly achieve 8 so fixing the number of teams won't help.

So my suggestion is...
reduce the number of allocated Super Rugby players from 14 to 12. set a date about 2/3rds through Super Rugby where 6 of these 12 players need to be nominated. If they get injured it's the corresponding NRC team that suffers.

 

[TOCC]

Surely the semi finals this week will prove that the comp has some serious player distribution issues. I'm not sure what would fix it but noticed the City coach made a reference to the fact their team was not just the Hunts and Kerevis but the club players that worked so hard to make the team play well. I'll bet they have BUT. Surely the Reds staff have a clue how to divide these teams evenly and I saw his comment as trying to suggest that the City team is not "stacked". Which after two seasons now I find even harder to believe. The other Reds team came second last and the whole problem with the lopsided nature of the comp is supposed to be that NSW have 1 too many teams. How many teams of City and Vikings quality can Australia actually run out? I'd suggest that it couldn't nearly achieve 8 so fixing the number of teams won't help.

In defence of QLD Country, they have had a number of Super Rugby players who have been ruled out through injury. Saia Fainga'a, Anthony Fainga'a, Chris Feauai-Sautia, Lolo Fakaosilea, Ed Quirk, Radike Samo, Jaime-Jerry Taulagi and Campbell Magnay are all Super Rugby players who have been ruled out with injury. Brisbane City by comparison have been extermely lucky with injuries in 2015.​

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In terms of how the Reds staff divided the players up, i thought it was done with Super Rugby players in key positions going to different teams(i.e Half-back/Fly-Half/Fullback), the backline that QLD Country could put on the field without any injuries is quite impressive.​

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9. Gale/Tuttle​

10. Greene​

11. Magnay/Perese​

12. Paia'aua​

13. Fainga'a​

14. CFS​

15. JJT​

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[Hugh Jarse]

That would probably work for every franchise except the NSW ones where the Super Rugby entity (Waratahs inc) have little or nothing to do with the NRC franchises, which are all independently owned by either a consortia or major shareholder of ARU/NSWRU Affiliates (Rays and Stars) or privately owned entities with no affiliation to existing rugby entities, apart from a loose agreement to select players from within certain catchments.

The tangled web of vested interests and agendas in NSW will make it rather difficult to apply a logical and sensible solution that would work like a charm elsewhere.

 

[Jagman]

In defence of QLD Country, they have had a number of Super Rugby players who have been ruled out through injury. Saia Fainga'a, Anthony Fainga'a, Chris Feauai-Sautia,

Lolo Fakaosilea, ​

Ed Quirk, Radike Samo, ​

Jaime-Jerry Taulagi and ​

Campbell Magnay are all Super Rugby players who have been ruled out with injury. In comparison to Brisbane City, who have been extremely lucky with no injuries in 2015.​

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That's certainly more than the fair share of injuries. But the stars could produce a very similar looking list. Also I'd add, a lopsided competition would mean the stronger teams get injured less than the weaker ones.


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[TOCC]

I really don't think the player distribution between the two QLD teams is the biggest issue, that will sort it self out slowly as new players join the Reds program and they get herded towards QLD Country instead of Brisbane City.

In my opinion the biggest issue is the performance of the NSW teams, even if you decrease the number of Super Rugby players to 12 or 10, is that really going to fix the issues in the NSW NRC teams?

Ultimately it needs to be acknowledged by the Waratahs and ARU, that it's in the best interest of all parties to have the Waratahs actively participate and contribute to the NSW based NRC teams. Purely through access to Waratahs training facilities, coaches and staff i think the NSW NRC teams could improve.

If the burden of supporting 4 teams is to great for Waratahs, then perhaps the ARU could offer to support one of the team(Rams perhaps), leverage some of the ARU resources to support this team.

 

[Jagman]

I really don't think the player distribution between the two QLD teams is the biggest issue, that will sort it self out slowly as new players join the Reds program and they get herded towards QLD Country instead of Brisbane City.

In my opinion the biggest issue is the performance of the NSW teams, even if you decrease the number of Super Rugby players to 12 or 10, is that really going to fix the issues in the NSW NRC teams?

Ultimately it needs to be acknowledged by the Waratahs and ARU, that it's in the best interest of all parties to have the Waratahs actively participate and contribute to the NSW based NRC teams. Purely through access to Waratahs training facilities, coaches and staff i think the NSW NRC teams could improve.

If the burden of supporting 4 teams is to great for Waratahs, then perhaps the ARU could offer to support one of the team(Rams perhaps), leverage some of the ARU resources to support this team.

The NSW teams perform quite well when they have at least 7 Super Rugby players. The last team to defeat City were the Rams and they had a much higher contingent of pros then. The Eagles and stars have also looked good when super rugby laden.

The problem with the Tahs is that it seems to be politically impossible for them to intervene. They have been derided for making the Eagles pay for using their facilities last year. But what would the other 3 clubs say if the Tahs helped them out? Also if the Tahs help each NSW club then they are giving unfair help to Sydney University compared to other Shute shield teams. That's why I'm a supporter of it either remaining as it is (with other super rugby affiliated NRC teams not able to siphon their Super Rugby injury toll onto Sydney teams) or the Tahs buy the Rams and the Rays and scrap the other two. The Tahs need to be completely out or completely in.


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[Rugbynutter39]

I use to share same view as you hj but then got more pragmatic as if we don't have a commercially viable and growing nrc comp in terms of fan base we won't be seeing any club players offered next step up before super rugby

Crowds for stars games always been poor (stretching it to blame rwc too much) as based around one shute shield side doesn't work so revamp or cut to ensure long term viability of nrc. Sometimes have to go two steps forward and one step back to ensure long term viability.

Like concept of nrc team playing in inner west but also need teams that can be competitive and positioned to attract wider fan base beyond one Shute shield side so something has to change. Need to do this to protect the nrc brand.

 

[TOCC]

The NSW teams perform quite well when they have at least 7 Super Rugby players. The last team to defeat City were the Rams and they had a much higher contingent of pros then. The Eagles and stars have also looked good when super rugby laden.

The problem with the Tahs is that it seems to be politically impossible for them to intervene. They have been derided for making the Eagles pay for using their facilities last year. But what would the other 3 clubs say if the Tahs helped them out? Also if the Tahs help each NSW club then they are giving unfair help to Sydney University compared to other Shute shield teams. That's why I'm a supporter of it either remaining as it is (with other super rugby affiliated NRC teams not able to siphon their Super Rugby injury toll onto Sydney teams) or the Tahs buy the Rams and the Rays and scrap the other two. The Tahs need to be completely out or completely in.

Who cares if the other Shute Shield teams get upset that the Stars are been provided assistance by the Tahs through the NRC. The other Shute Shield teams would also benefit by having their players and coaches exposed to the Tahs system.

Im sure the Tahs would be able to find a way to provide coaching/logistical/marketing/administrative assistance to all four clubs and improve their level of professionalism without having to scrap teams. If that is stretching resources too thin, then call on the ARU to help assist one of the team administratively and by leveraging resources.

At the end of the day, something is better then nothing..

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Who cares if the other Shute Shield teams get upset that the Stars are been provided assistance by the Tahs through the NRC. The other Shute Shield teams would also benefit by having their players and coaches exposed to the Tahs system.

Im sure the Tahs would be able to find a way to provide coaching/logistical/marketing/administrative assistance to all four clubs and improve their level of professionalism without having to scrap teams. If that is stretching resources too thin, then call on the ARU to help assist one of the team administratively and by leveraging resources.

At the end of the day, something is better then nothing..

Definitely agree on your one key point that compared to other NRC sides from other states, NSW NRC sides suffering from lack of support from Waratahs and use of wider Waratah brand.

 

[Hugh Jarse]

What is the purpose of the NRC? Is it supposed to be a lite Australian SuperRugby Conference by proxy like the Curry Cup, or a Semi-Pro development competition like the ITM Cup?

Some NRC and SuperRugby franchises have adopted the Curry Cup approach, while in NSW its more ITM Cup.