This thread regularly spirals. Going into a range of themes.
- There is no improvement!
- Everyone is shit.
- It is going to be better.
- The coaching sucks.
- Let's wait until next year.
- The playing group is young and needs time.
I am of the belief the playing group for next year, providing it stays fit is probably one of the better ones we have put together over the last decade. Low bar, seeing as we have had some stinkers. But, there is the potential there to put together a quality rugby side with a good mix of youth and experience.
We unsuccessfully run through a few different strategies in terms of player identification, signing, retention and development.
We had the picking the scraps era (2019 - 22) where we had the likes of:
Ray Niua, Sef Fa'agasa, Jack Whetton, Bryn Gatland, Marty Banks (the returned version, not 2015 version), Tevita Nabura, Sione Misiloi, Zane Kapeli, Teariki Ben-Nicholas, Jesse Parete, Mitch Hunt, Chris Kuridrani, Ricky Jackson, Andrew Makalio, Scott Gregory etc come in.
There were some absolute battlers that came down for stints with the Landers in that period.
Then overnight we decided to flip the script. Out went securing battlers. In came this push to bring in youth. We were going to back our kids and they were going to be our future. In a shocking turn of events, they were not ready. Some had good games, others had shockers and some have barely been sighted.
A lot of the original cohort will be gone by the end of this year.
There was a system failure that caused this. It relates to the 2019 - 22 period and the hard switch we undertook. All the other NZ franchises have a core of established Super players and All Blacks. Meaning the pressure is not on the young player to have to carry a team. If a Kyle Brown debuts, he will have three All Blacks in the backline. Maccas Springer has had Will Jordan beside him in his development years.
Thig Highlanders group has either had to front up against All Blacks and Wallabies beside other kids, or sometimes alongside guys who are NPC quality players.
Teams at this level should run in a cycle. The majority of your starting team should be experienced players. They are mixed in with the best young talent and can support them. The glue guys are in the layer below. Capable and can fit in, but they aren't going to be the stars. Then you have 10 or so players who will stand up over the next couple of years. Then as the top layer leaves, you replace them up through the squad. That would be the perfect model.
We have not had that luxury and it has shown.
We are now trying to move to a model where there are some experienced players. Where not every NZ U20s player from the region should automatically get a full contract. Then identifying holes that need to be filled and brining the right players in.
I am not putting blind faith in it working, but it seems a better model than the ones we have run between 2019 and 2026.
The issue with it now is that we are seeing players leave who were promised the world and are only just coming to a point of their career where they are Super quality rugby players and we will have to watch them play elsewhere.