slaughter hows bringing back the tusk cup / national knockout club comp a waste of money? for the cash that nzrl spent on plane trips & expenses for administrators and family to go to the world cup in the uk/france and little bit of sponsorship you could run the tusk cup/national knockout comp,not hard to book a few buses for club teams to travel from waikato/wellington/auckland/taranaki or pay for plane flights for semis/final to or from chch/aucks/well/etc and pay a ref and linesmen and modest promotion of final alot of that can be done for free social media/ maori tv/league shows on sky giving it a mention and err ar em website forums such as this very one your reading now... would seem to me could be easily done for modest coin.
nzrl currently not the best sports administrators no doubt but people such as ourselves lack of involvement and lack of modest innovation and local league players/supporters not insisting that our administrators perform to a better standard plays a role as well...
anyways interesting reading whats happening in the local club league comps around nz at the moment after all this section of the site is for posts and info on local rugby league
There is a new Academy system being proposed that seems to go against what they actually should doing and will aid in losing more talent to the QLD and NSW cup IMO..
https://www.foxsportspulse.com/asso...ID=64815&&news_task=DETAIL&articleID=31132925
Canterbury Rugby League hope a proposed new Christchurch-based player academy will better prepare young South Island players for moves to NRL clubs.
New Zealand Rugby League (NZRL) officials plan to introduce four academies - two in Auckland, one in Wellington catering for the central region, and the fourth in Christchurch - to give teenagers a solid grounding before they move across the Tasman.
The academies will start this November and will run over the summer. The 50 players chosen in each academy will train four or five times a week, in the evenings. Players will have to pay for the privilege.
A series of inter-academy games will be held at the end of the summer before a New Zealand youth team is selected.
The NZRL estimate hundreds of young New Zealand hopefuls move to Australia each year in a bid to break into a NRL club. But only a tiny percentage will ever make it to first grade.
Around 17 per cent of the current 417 NRL first graders come from New Zealand, the second-largest production factory outside Queensland.
NZRL high performance general manager Tony Iro told Fairfax that some teenage Kiwi players encounter problems such as homesickness which makes it tough to settle in Australia.
"The biggest issue we have got here with our youth is the pull of the NRL clubs over to Australia," Iro, a former Kiwi, said.
"It reduces our playing numbers and pulls talent away from our local game but also there's obviously welfare issues that the Australians are experiencing with our kids. They have all got aspirations to be NRL players but 99 per cent of them won't be."
The academy concept has the support of Canterbury Rugby League general manager Craig Kerr.
He said it would be a "win-win situation" if the CRL was able to "keep our players here a little longer, allow them to keep playing in our competitions and better prepare them for the transition" to the NRL environment.
New Zealand Resident 16s coach Jeff Whittaker, from Christchurch, has also endorsed the academy structure. He and New Zealand Resident 18s coach Tom Ball will be involved with the Christchurch academy. Satellite training groups will be based in other South Island centres.
Prominent players' agent Frank Endacott believes the academy will help South Island talent better prepare for the shift across the Tasman.
The former Kiwis and Warriors head coach represents a number of young Mainland men who have already made successful transitions.
Former Hornby junior Nu Brown, 19, has broken into the Cronulla Sharks' first grade team this season and has just earned a new, two-year contract.
Halswell product Matt McIlwrick, a former hooker, has been playing loose forward in the Canberra Raiders' first grade side. His younger brother, Jeremy, has just signed for another year for Raiders' Holden Cup (20 years and under) team where he has played alongside fellow Cantabrians Jules Webley and Thoren Fidow-Kele.
Endacott also looks after West Coaster Slade Griffin, who has played first grade for the Melbourne Storm but is out with a knee injury for the rest of the season, although he will be back with the Storm next season.
Another Coaster, former New Zealand age-group shot put and discus champion Jordan Pinnock will head across the Tasman in November after signing a three-year deal with the Newcastle Knights.
Pinnock, a Year 13 student at Greymouth High School, will also study electrical engineering at Newcastle University.
Endacott said NRL rules require "all players in the 18s and 20s grades to either be doing tertiary study or working. They can't just sit at home playing video games when they're not training".
That suits Pinnock, who said he has always wanted to go to university to get a qualification behind him.
The 17-year-old from the Brunner club has been commuting to Christchurch for four years to play in his own age-group for Halswell. He has also been a South Island age-group representative and last year played for the New Zealand Residents 16s.
He hopes to make the New Zealand 18s this season before moving to Newcastle.
Endacott believes Pinnock, who is 1.89m tall and 110kg, has a good future as a backrower who would also one day "make a very mobile frontrower".
Pinnock, Endacott said, had an essential attribute for making a move to the NRL ranks - a top attitude.
That's important because Endacott estimates only 15 per cent of Holden Cup 20s grade players make it to the NRL first grade," and some might only get one game". Only 10 per cent have long-term NRL careers.
