NZRL drops ball over Comm Games - Ackland Auckland Rugby League chief executive John Ackland has taken a swipe at the New Zealand Rugby League for not sending a nines team to this years Commonwealth Games. Nines will be an exhibition sport in Glasgow, with an under-19 tournament being held June 27-28, a month before the the Games begin. It is hoped that this will be the catalyst for nines to be included fully as a sport for the 2018 Games, on the Gold Coast. However, while the likes of Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, South Africa and Canada will field teams in Glasgow, New Zealand wont and Ackland, who at the beginning of the year was employed by the NZRL as their national game development manager, says its a bad move and the ARL would have liked to have been involved. Anything thats an opportunity to grow rugby league internationally is good, Ackland said. Its a chance to give domestic players an experience out of the ordinary that they would never have otherwise and it should have been grabbed with both hands. Rugby league needs these pathways for our young people to stay in the game in New Zealand. The big message is that, if they want to grow the game in New Zealand and progress it, then were certainly in the market to be a powerful partner. However, NZRL general manager high performance, Tony Iro, says they didnt think it was worth sending a team to Scotland. Its a development tournament, the Australians are only sending an under-18 development team, Iro said. Theyre not even sending their best under-18 players because their representative calendar is on at the same time. We just felt that our resources would be better spent on preparing our other sides on a national level, including the Junior Kiwis. It is across the other side of the world, its an expensive exercise, so we needed to prioritise the development of our younger athletes and where we saw a best fit. At this stage, with the way our calendar looks, we saw a better benefit in spending that resource on our national programmes here and especially around our Junior Kiwis. With league played professionally in only four countries, the sport has struggled for international recognition. So, isnt having one of those four nations not attending the tournament a bad look? It would be if it was a genuine international premium competition, Iro said. Ad Feedback But at the end of the day its a development sport, its at an under-19 level and our main competitor, Australia, are sending a third-string team. So we have to weigh up where we see the advantages in spending resources in sending a side up there. Is it the best way to develop our players? We see better opportunities further on in the calendar. Iro said the NZRL would soon announce its international programme for the Junior Kiwis, and it was likely to feature games against Australia later in the year.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 01:21:12 +0000
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