Cam Howard is a brilliant footballer.
Very strong and very quick
Great football brain
One wonders why he is not in the GT run on side.
Politics perhaps. Maybe just trying to focus him.
Never healthy to have a parent who had a son just
recently through the school as the assistant coach.
Bad move.
If he does not make the run on side in the first game
I would be flabbergasted
My apologies Alistair, for possibly jumping too quickly to rebut your assertions above earlier on. However, I think you are targeting the wrong person responsible.
I was very surprised a week or two later when I saw that Cam Howard had not made any of the GPS teams this year. However, things began to click when I found out / realised that it is the Head Coach who nominates players to be selected for these teams and then the teams are formed with a bit of debate from the Head Coaches of the respective schools.
At Terrace Rugby in recent years there seems to have been an extremely strong anti – rowing push. Three or four years ago I remember Terrace lost around six of their best rowers from yr10 so they could focus on rugby in yr11 and 12. Since then there seems to have been a bit of a talent drain from the Terrace rowing program to Rugby. I am not sure why exactly, but a couple of posters to this forum that seem to have strong connections to the Terrace rugby camp really made the anti-rowing stance clear last year in this forum and targeted Howard who had rowed First VIII for the school when he was in Year 10. I remember
Brave & Game saying things about Howard where he was “concerned that rowing will see him too lean to have any sort of impact”.
B&G questioned his physical presence calling him small, which I found to be completely false when I later learned that he was weighing around mid 90kgs, which was not too bad for a backrower. Another poster here who seemed to have strong Terrace rugby connections was
Dark Side who referred to Howard as “the poster boy for why rowing is bad for your rugby”.
Dark Side then went further and said “rowing is great for cardio, however for strength training it fails to provide much of what is essential for various positions in rugby and is also detrimental to speed.”
Several posters like Gungenia and myself had a crack at these false assertions. Particularly saying that rowing can and is complimentary to rugby. BBC have five of their GPS rugby representatives who rowed this year. Guys like Hosea, Vela-Tupohi, Taugaele, Van Nek and Kibble. These guys have not lost anything on the rugby field from the rowing they have done this season. None of those guys, or Howard for that matter, seemed to be short on strength and speed when I saw them in GPS trials at TSS.
However, Terrace Rugby seem to take a completely opposite view. Particularly when the GPS representatives from Terrace for this week include several players who had quit rowing to focus on rugby. With one of those players, who is a fine rugby player but was selected for a specialized position that I am sure he has played in less than two games ever. Then none of the (three) players I know of who rowed this year at Terrace, who I thought were a good chance of selection even got a look in.
You could say that Howard was not good enough against other backrowers from other schools. He was selected as a shadow reserve for the QLD Schoolboy 7’s team at the end of last year. One of only a handful of forwards in the squad. But appears to be the only non selection of eligible players from this squad into the GPS teams. Then there is also the selection of a yr11 backrower from Terrace (who looks around 20kgs lighter than Howard) who I saw get belted and driven behind the gain line time and again down at trials at TSS a couple of weeks ago but gets the nod for a GPS team ahead of him. That nod pushed / nominated by the school’s Head Coach.
I think the non-selections for Howard and other rowers at school and for GPS teams are about sending a message to future aspiring Terrace rugby players – DO NOT ROW if you want to play First XV RUGBY.
