The ARU Web Site
http://www.rugby.com.au/tryrugby/PathwaytoGold/NationalU16Championships.aspx
tells us the following:
The National U16s Championships provides the first taste of open national level competition and state/territory representation for our best U16 year old players in Australia. The assembly of the best U16 year old players in the country provides an important performance benchmarking platform for players, coaches and professional high performance staff.
The Championships are conducted by the ARU in late September/October each year in either Sydney or Brisbane. The Championships schedule includes an intensive match schedule as well as important off field education for players, coaches, managers, medical staff and referees ensuring the week is a quality introduction to the levels of performance and development required to play, coach, manage and referee at the highest levels.
The purpose the Championships is to provide an effective quality platform for:
a) the selection and development of each state/territories talented young players, coaches, managers, referees and other officials;
b) the recruitment and retention of players, coaches, referees, managers and other officials;
c) the benchmarking of talented U16 players;
d) assisting with the improvement of playing standards and development of the game in all participating states/territories.
Teams competing at the National U16s Championships are:
Division 1
ACT, NSW1, NSW2, QLD1, QLD2, WA, VIC
Division 2
SA, NT, TAS, National Indigenous
Each state and territory team has a process for selection that includes club and school level, affiliate and association and regional and state representative trial programs.
The Championships crown a national champion team at Division 1 and Division 2 level as well as recognizing outstanding player contributions to team performance (‘Best Team Man’). Many players from these Championships will graduate to higher level development and representative programs.
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There appears to be an obvious error in the Div 1 team listing in that there will be three teams representing NSW at the Championships, Schools, Country and Sydney Juniors, not NSW 1 and NSW2. A 7 team Division 1 competition also does not seem to make any sense.
Anyhow, I am looking for information to put together a couple of blog posts on the champs.
I am looking for Gaggerlanders outside NSW who can provide me with background info in the various state teams and the Indigenous selections. When are the trials being held, when will teams be finalised, what trials have been played, and what are planned etc. Send me a PM with any contribution you want to make, or post relevant info here and I will pick it up for the blog.