Investing more money into the nz game is a costly sinkhole which won’t do much
Until the nzrl get taken over by the arl it is what it is. The arl ageed with sky nz to guarantee nz two homes tests a year outside of wc years to make money off its up to the nzrl to get those right. Crowds for the kiwis are poor
Bringing in a second and third nrl side which have juniors from under 16 to reserve grade playing against the Aussies and paid for by nz and Australian tv companies is a whole different kettle of fish
Nrl always do top down and throw money at it to grow the game
Look, if you want the central thesis of this thread to happen then their needs to be investment in the NZ game, it's not going to happen otherwise.
Let's discuss this in terms of the claims in the DT articles you posted.
They repeat the point almost verbatim from the article from 6 months ago, that 26 or so players in the Warriors juniors squads come from rugby schools. Of course they do, because league is barely a schools game in NZ. There's probably only two or three schools that would be considered league schools. Without regular schools comps the majority of kids are going to still play rugby.
More dumb shit from George was his claim that wearing a representative jumper is limited in rugby until you play Super rugby. WTF???? There is provincial rep teams from U12's upwards (there's rep teams within provinces before that too), there's regional rep teams (partly based on Super teams), there's NZ U15s, Baabaas, Secondary Schools teams etc. Added to that that there's a National schools comp based on the Super teams with strong regional schools competitions under that. After school there's age grade Super comps and development comps. It's like the reporter had no interest in fact checking anything.
Bringing in one more NRL team and it's junior grades in 5 years time isn't going to get you to your goal of league taking over NZ. There needs to be a decent infrastructure so that the pathways aren't just try and get into the junior teams of the Warriors or possibly one other team or go to Australia. You need proper school league comps that aren't just a week long national tournament played in school holidays.
Top down only works as long as the Warriors are successful, investing in the school aged comps properly by the NRL is going to be more fruitful in the long run than hoping the Warriors are successful more often than not (because we all know the history of the Warriors).
The Kiwi crowds are relatively poor because NZers have lost faith in the international game. We should be looking to rebuild that rather than waving it away. TBH taking away Tongans from games in Oz and NZ and the crowds are poor.
