ZAC PACZKOWSKI has started a journey that few Victorians have ever even contemplated. The 18-year-old back-rower will set off to Brisbane in the hope of one day playing in the National Rugby League.
It will be a long journey.
Paczkowski, who was told by Melbourne Storm that he was not good enough to make the big time, has been invited by premier Brisbane Broncos to trial with Wynnum Manly, one of its affiliated Queensland Cup clubs.
He will be put into a development program and probably start off playing colts.
Paczkowski, 18, will be under the gaze of Brisbane recruiters who monitor the progress of players in the local competition and have first dibs if they show the potential to develop into first-graders.
Rugby league is still a foreign sport in Victoria — the suburban club competition is of limited quality and the game's administrators are only just starting to make some inroads into the primary and secondary school systems.
It is a bit of a novelty to see a player emerging from junior ranks in Melbourne to pursue a career in the NRL.
"Everyone around town says if you ever want to make it in the league you've got to get out of Melbourne," Paczkowski said.
"There's no chance of making it if you're down here. We've had plenty of kids with great potential have to move out of town because they knew that they were not going to get nothing down here."
However, things are slowly changing and the route to the NRL could be much shorter in coming years. The Melbourne Storm and league administrators are investing substantial sums into schools and developing local talent.
The Victorian Rugby League, with the Storm, has introduced an academy program where about 20 of the best under-18 players are nurtured through a training, skills and weights program.
General manager of development Greg Brentnall said he hoped the Storm's first home-grown first-grader could emerge from four players who had been invited to a training camp in January.
Bayside Secondary College last year introduced a scholarship program and Brentnall said Melbourne had three school competitions with four to five schools in each.
"The number of kids participating in clinics or some type of rugby league activity, I think, is getting up around 48,000 contacts this year, which is huge when you are trying to develop an interest in the game first and also develop an interest in the Storm," Brentnall said.
But Mathew Morunga, president of the Waverley Oakleigh club, said a side-effect of the rugby league's focus on establishing school competitions and its cherry-picking of top talent was that it had decimated the local competition and the opportunities for those such as Paczkowski who were not rated in the top echelon of juniors were limited.
"The rugby league system down here isn't big enough to support schools as well as (weekend) competition," Morunga said.
But Brentnall said it would take time for the benefits to develop.
In the meantime, Paczkowski, an academy member this year who began playing under-12s at Waverley Oakleigh when his family moved from Canberra, said he was determined to prove Storm wrong.
He has also trained at the Australian Institute of Sport, and legendary Broncos recruiter Cyril Connell, who asked Wynnum to take Paczkowski, said he had potential.
Storm foundation captain Glenn Lazarus, who has acted as a manager for Paczkowski, said: "A lot can happen between now and years down the track but I think if he works really hard at it he'll get an opportunity to at least go to a NRL team.
"You just hope that these sort of things don't come back to haunt the Storm as in a local kid playing for another NRL club … one of the hardest things I found down in Victoria when we were trying to entrench the Storm was trying to get exposure to the four corners of Victoria.
"Now with Origin, the Storm and Tests being played down there, and with money being poured into the development, things are starting to happen. Who knows — we might see a huge increase of kids coming out of Victoria and playing in NRL sides."
LINK QRL.com.au
Always best to check what clubs are doing with their junior programs. These things take time did you ever think the swans would draw twice the crowd that the eels do 20 years ago?
