Quote:
Originally Posted by St. Pats
Nice that they state the obvious. You have well over half the players that they pick that are at best part time rugby players. 16 with no rugby at all / so not even playing in the BC Premier League which plays in winter. Why then are they chosen? If these players are serious about making the Canadian team they should be in BC. As the coach says the level may not be high enough but at least they are playing. Rugby Canada should be finding these guys jobs in BC for the ones that are willing to move.
The ones that aren't shouldn't be picked. As he says later on they keep picking guys that are not good enough just to fill in numbers. They added a bunch of young guys which is a good move and added to the base of players in the system.
Get the guys who want to play and are willing to sacrifice moving to BC. Then pump that league as much as possible with better coach's etc. Let the other provinces concentrate on their youth programs and feed into the Premier League either via UBC and UVIC or with other teams that will sponsor players from other provinces.
I really don't see any other way(weather dictating) other than indoor stadiums(would cost a fortune) for them to advance the game.
|
Well he does say that they are trying to get some players to head down to New Zealand and play there. But the fitness angle he goes through sounds pretty bad, but somewhat explanatory for what we've seen over the past couple years. The team can come out and look decent for maybe 50-60 minutes tops, and then fold in the final quarter. There have been a lot of losses where they held the lead and dropped it (and some were significant leads!)
But there are also players overseas all winter. Some aren't playing at all and it sounds like some aren't staying in shape when they are there. Or at least by the time they came back in June they weren't in shape. That sounds like a commitment issue in general?