juniors spectator
Stan Wickham (3)
Having seen how the system has worked I cannot see very much change for this year even though there are no ARU u16s Nationals...Country have usually chosen their team much earlier than Sydney or schools. The SJRU and schools selection trials occur around the same time and there are boys who go down both selection pathways. There is an agreement between SJRU and schools to have a draft of any player who is common to both. This is why the teams are not announced as soon as the trials are completed. NSWRU facilitates the draft meeting. From my understanding this number varies from year to year. I was told it has been as few as 2 and as many as 8. I imagine it depends on what style of game the coaches of the two teams want to play. Schools and SJRU take it in turns each year as to who has first choice.OK. Lets start at the top of the pyramid for 16s rugby. There are Three Rep teams, NSW Schools Sydney Juniors and NSW Country. All boys are at school so they can represent NSW Schools. To get there they have a carnival and trial matches in their groups. ie' GPS , CHS, CAS, ISA etc
Sydney Juniors can only be picked from boys who play club rugby and go through their rep team to their zone team and finally the Sydney team.
Your boy is probably doing both pathways and funnily enough the various carnivals dont clash.
After the Zone carnival next weekend Sydney will have pencilled in the team they want. Schools will also have a team of boys they want. The two selection groups go into a room and any name on both lists gets haggled over to produce two team one called Sydney Juniors and one called NSW Schools. In theory your boy does have a choice but as this is done behind closed doors you don't know whether the other team wanted him.
If your really confident you can say you don't want to be considered for one of the teams.
I hope this gets you a little closer to understanding the issues
By the way Country gets raped by all involved because they lose boys to everyone.
Country players are not eligible for the SJRU team unless playing in a Sydney club team. And it would be assumed they wouldn't be eligible for country if not playing in country competition.
Without the ARU nationals the teams may only just play each other or other invited unions...there is a suggestion of a tournament over the October long weekend but how many teams turn up is anyone's guess. One would assume that the boys in the 3 NSW teams would gain entry to the JGC for next year. Perhaps the tournament could be a trial for the JGC?