2
![Not allowed!](images/buttons/down_dis.png)
![Not allowed!](images/buttons/up_dis.png)
To be fair, the Rebels were wooden spooners. They need to develop their Super Rugby team. The Force narrowly missed out on finals. The depth and experience of our EPS/WTS was a factor in not making it. Our priority is to develop the depth of the WTS and to speed up the development of future Force players (not necessarily for 2015). Harry Scoble, Richard Hardwick, Luke Burton and Brad Lacey are all young fellas who will likely play for the Force in the future. Not to mention a handful of similar players on the bench. Why not speed that up? It is also great to see Justin Turner getting up to speed and stringing games together. He had so much potential before his injury woes.
It's good for Heiberg, Walton and Stander (who are signed for the Force but didn't play a lot in 2014- well maybe not Stander) to get a bit more experience.
Also how dark would we be if one of our Super stars gets a 6-12 month injury in an NRC game?
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
If you are cool with that logic, then I imagine you'd be equally cool with the ARU saying the same - "No need to help the Force, because our priority isn't that they realistically compete so long as they develop depth for the Wallabies. No Wallabies or top-ups either, 'cos we'd be well dark if one of them hurt themselves playing in meaningless development matches..."
Play in a comp and don't actually try to win it, you merely diminish its credibility. This thing only exists because Fox covers the cost, but I'd be surprised if they'll keep ponying up $1.5M a year for a comp that leaves out its best players and generally acts like a juniors comp where everyone gets a participation medal and no-one keeps score. I want the ITM Cup and all the pride and respect that goes with that. That will never happen if half the teams act like it isn't worth winning.
Look I'd prefer a system where we 50/50 it between Super players and development players, but I also value Super Rugby over the NRC. Super Rugby can exist without the NRC. The same can't be said in reverse.
Maybe we'll get a step closer to something more resembling the ITM cup next season.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
I thought we had a home game next week, obviously that's wrong. (Also forgot last week was a "Home" game for the Spirit.)
Probably shows how much attention I've actually paid to the competition. I watched this first game on Fox Sports and went to the first Spirit home game but other then that I haven't paid much attention to it outside the Spirit games, and to be fair all that is involved there is looking the scores up online. Completely forgot they were on last night until about the 60th minute.
Last edited by jargan83; 12-09-14 at 21:12.
Unfortunately they won't, because they'll only be recruiting NRC players at entry level wages. And we'll be identifying far more talent than we could ever have space for. The math seems obvious...
It is something I wish they had looked at when setting the NRC up. For mine, the SR teams should be part of the funding model for the NRC, seeing as they are ultimately the end user for the players developed. Something along the lines of each contracted player costing the SR team $10k per year (say) , split among the NRC teams in proportion to the amount of time that player spent playing for each team. Then you'd have the situation where if an NRC team weren't developing players it would cost them funding, and if a SR team were constantly importing players from other states it would come out of their pocket.
No NRC game has cracked the "most watched" list in the Foxtel ratings but when the highest rates show on a Thursday night only draws 86,000 viewers it's not too much.
20th usually comes in at the 35k mark on a Thursday night.