While I praise the QLD system of lumping all the kids into one pool of 100+ for trials over several weekends which eventually results in a QLD Reds (I's) and QLD Whites (II's) team which is selected independently by Reds and ARU selectors, one of my snouts north of the border is critical of the process claiming bias towards certain Schools associations.
Guess you can't please all of the people all of the time.
The QLD u16 trial and selection system has seemed to work okay and carried a lot more transparency in previous years. All players would attend trials and take part in skills sessions as well as trial games over around three Sundays in August(usually). While there were some excusals for injury and other rep duties (mainly u15 State School Champs), it was all in for every player to trial.
However, there was a major shakeup in the timing of the GPS Rugby season in 2012. All other associations maintained the status quo, but GPS moved their season from April to July (across term two and first three weeks of term three) to July to September (all of term three).
This meant that the GPS competition was the only school competition continuing during the trial period. Coaching staff (First XV) of many of the GPS schools may have requested that full contact time be limited for the GPS players as they were recovering from prior day games. From what I heard, the first trial this year then became a skills session only for the GPS players and the non GPS players may have played a trial game.
By the last round of selection trials the whole game changed with notification of a change of procedure for trials and selection. Instead of the 100+ shortlisted for selection trialling against each other in a set of controlled match ups, the selectors went and watched some of the GPS games or requested videos of games they could not attend, from the schools. The non GPS school players were the only ones in the 100+ squad requested to turn up and trial. From that, the selections for the two teams were made. So in many cases there was no head to head trial matchups. These changes did remove some transparency in the selection process.
The other advantage that the GPS school players probably had is that they were competing in tough competition during the trial period. As the other school associations had mostly completed their comps a couple of months before, it could be reasoned that the condition of some of those non GPS players may have deteriorated from their peak when they were playing other schools week to week. I know a lot of the non GPS players were still competing at club level, but in my opinion, this is a long way from the intensity of most school association competitions.
So what occurred with school association selection (although Downlands is played in most of the GPS byes, I have classified as "other schools" and not included as a GPS school)? Out of the 100+ "shortlist" around 51% were from the GPS assoc. and 24% from AIC and 24% from all other schools. Of the 46 selected for the Red and White teams, over 67% were from GPS schools, only 13% from AIC schools and 20% from all other schools.
Now I know every year group is different, but when compared to the two Qld team selections for the National Schools Champs in July, the breakup is very similar with 72% from GPS, 13% from AIC and 15% from other schools.
So it is probably not the actual number selected that should give reason for non GPS school supporters to feel "aggreived". It is the transparency of the selection process that got "lost" this year. It will be interesting if Qld u16 trials are now brought forward to the July holiday period and provide a full trial process and also a longer lead in for the teams to train before the actual competition.
