U16 schoolboy rugby

[Soupnasty]

This U16 and U19 Super rugby would be run as a cost/investment for Rugby.
It makes no sense for that investment to have teams lose by 100.
It is impossible to tell whether the NSW team or players were excellent as they weren't tested.
Complete waste of content for Stan; surely only the families of the boys that played bothered to watch.

Rugby in Australia can't afford to keep messing this up.

It might have been better to have no Rebels team, feed them into the Brumbies squads and then not have a bye.

 

[RugbyBot]

The Brumbies were already strengthened by some Waratah players and lost by 90 anyway.

Agree the comp doesn’t work. Those Brumby and Rebels teams looked about the strength of a good Sydney school team. The U16 Randwick team would have easily beaten both.

The best thing for that age group would be a National champs with Melbourne, ACT, WA playing the Sydney and Qld districts. Then maybe a NSW v Qld match.

 

[Soupnasty]

The Brumbies were already strengthened by some Waratah players and lost by 90 anyway.

Agree the comp doesn’t work. Those Brumby and Rebels teams looked about the strength of a good Sydney school team. The U16 Randwick team would have easily beaten both.

The best thing for that age group would be a National champs with Melbourne, ACT, WA playing the Sydney and Qld districts. Then maybe a NSW v Qld match.

My guess is, if you asked someone in the system, they would say that this is run as a counter to Harrold Matts and SG ball and that is their "strategic validation" for the competition.

But

It's not working
It's not competitive.
Clearly, it isn't doing the job of keeping players.
And the general standard is very poor - so it is not making better players either

Just like Super Rugby, it needs a major rethink.

 

[Mule]

My guess is, if you asked someone in the system, they would say that this is run as a counter to Harrold Matts and SG ball and that is their "strategic validation" for the competition.

But

It's not working
It's not competitive.
Clearly, it isn't doing the job of keeping players.
And the general standard is very poor - so it is not making better players either

Just like Super Rugby, it needs a major rethink.

Not much of a rethink required; basically like the Senior Super Rugby squads worked, pick the best 150 players nationally (yes more from NSW & QLD), allocating them equally across the brands (afraid it means quite a lot of local lads from ACT, VIC & WA would miss out though…)

closer games, better spectacle, rewarding the best players, inspiring those on the cusp…