In the meantime the SJRU will be choosing an Under 16’s team from the NSW Regionals
As I’ve said, the trend towards forming super teams is not healthy for rugby because (a)Three or four teams dominate the comp (yes inside shoulder even by the arbitrary 40 pts you leapt on, it’s happened to West’s 3 out of 4 games) and (b)With fewer teams the less ‘gifted’ don’t get as much game time or don’t play at all. It’s been suggested some don’t like playing top level players which is not true; they just don’t like playing 15 of them in a no contest slaughter.
Then the State champs will truly be the next step up rather than a de-facto extension of the A grade village comp and serve as the basis for zone selection, with less weight on Sydney selections because it gives an unfair advantage to the top few teams.
Sydney selections, based mostly on performance in the zone tournament is more transparent and a fairer process as these teams are the most evenly matched and selectors are best able to compare apples with apples.
Not the preference of those with different agendas I know, as it makes it difficult to justify the dominance of a few clubs (For the sensitive I won’t mention names, I’ll leave it to the readers to form their opinions as to where much of it might come from).
So for example my tip is MWZ 16’s will win it again this year. In a four horse race for a squad of 23 the winners could reasonably expect 6 or more selections, yes? Last year in the 15’s they had 3.
I’ll watch with interest to see what happens in this year’s Champs and the look of the village club comps post reps.