Mid season is upon us, and with it comes a universal bye. An opportunity to reflect.
The state of the Premier Competition is disturbing. The gap between the top 3 or 4 and the rest of the comp is greater than I have seen it for several years, and I can see it getting worse.
Two clubs, Wanneroo and Perth in particular, have to take a dose of reality. They need to be looking at what is ahead for them in the next 1 to 5 years. Whatever they have been doing over the last 3 or 4 seasons hasn't been working. They need quality players to support the core of club stalwarts they still have. They need a structured approach to their coaching programs which hasn't been obvious to me these past few years.
When your club isn't travelling well you have to avoid the trap of adopting a siege mentality and bunkering down in the hope things will improve. Invariably they don't. I don't profess to know what the solution is for these particular clubs, but I have seen it happen in my own during the bad times, and we have been slow learners ourselves until recent years.
The answer for Palmyra was to seek proven experience and innovative thinking in our coaches, and to select coaches who can develop a rapport with their players to get the best out of them. Fresh blood on the committee and putting old goats like me out to pasture also helped.
We also rid ourselves of any delusion that RugbyWA would do anything for us, or that we would receive any thing like a "fair" allocation of Force players to play for us. Instead we identified the holes in our team, inquired from our own players who they knew locally and overseas who could fill those gaps, approached agents and overseas clubs, and, most importantly,over several years, developed our juniors and put time, money and coaching capital into our colts and under 18s. Our coaching and management team in colts is of a high quality, stable, and attuned to the mentality and priorities of these young men.
You may take the piss, if you are so inclined, but we have had up to 9 of our current colts take the field in premier grade this season, and 4 at one time in the same game at one stage, without skipping a beat.
Over the last couple of seasons at least 6 of our regular first grade players have been former colts and are still playing, and even more have been fixtures in second grade.
Sure, you can buy a colts team, but I can assure you that you won't get the loyalty and commitment that you get from your own home grown and developed lads.
I know it helps to have money, but you have to seriously prioritise what you do with the money available to you, if you are to have success.
I'm not making these comments to be a blowhard, but in the interests of the competition as a whole. It does no one any good to see proud clubs die the death of a thousand cuts.
