Shute Shield 2012

Woodies - Well deserved Premiers for 2011 on the back of a solid year round performance.

Now it is time to start to wang on about Season 2012.

A couple of thoughts to start with:

Any updates on player movements or coaching staff movements

As well as player and coaching staff movements, what about Club Issues Updates: Things are tough out there in Clubland.

Highlanders Licenced club has apparently gone into receivership. Despite the "brave face" from the Rugby club, this has to have an effect on it.

The Southern Courier newspaper reported that Randwick were struggling to pay rental on Coogee Oval and were looking for a council bailout.

There was a press release to members of Gordon stating that the social club had been placed in receivership. So it is confirmed. It will have an effect on the rugby club for sure.
Doesn't surprise me that Randwick can't pay their bills. They posted a half million dollar loss for the last financial year.

Another rumour I've heard, my beloved Marlins, cannot afford to pay a general manager due to all the promises made to players. And will now be without a gm until further notice. This is very concerning, especially as we now no longer have a licensed club...like Parra/Penrith/Warringah.....

Daniel Manu to West Harbour, Cameron Blades and Matt Barr to Southern Districts.

Randwicks ground fee's were waivered this year due to them struggling financially. But they havent paid ground fees in a couple of years so owe the council alot of money.
There is an independant review of coaching/game play starting today lead by Bob Dwyer, to look at what happened with Randwick on the field this year.
Head coach Craig Morrison has a 2 year deal (2011/12).

One of the quotes implies that the attendance actually pays for ground hire - if so the councils must be giving the clubs a very soft ride on the hiring.
I heard during the season that the Randwick licensed club is in trouble - I can tell you that whatever deal the big boys have with the council does not apply to juniors at Latham: for some time fields were not marked out allegedly because of unpaid hiring charges...refs refused to ref some games.
You cannot run these split comps: they tried it in the 80s and my recollection is it was a disaster - Uni finished up in 2nd division and norths were in the wilderness for 10 years.
This is why I am so critical of the ARU.what happened to the profit from 2003 RWC.we never saw any of it!!!!
:'(

my understanding is that the aru give all sydney and brisbane clubs about 80 odd grand each to run..I would assume a lot of money came from 2003 RWC. they didnt run split comps that i can recall in the 80s though I will stand corrected here.

Rumours coming out of Coogee are that the Randwick licensed club are seeking another club to buy them out or to merge with them and that Easts leagues are considering a takeover....

1981?
Might have been later. 1/2 season and then a regrade and the top teams went off to a round robin. And the bottom teams did the same. Something like that anyway.
I think you will find that very little money ever trickled down from RWC 2003 - I recall the profit was $50m....no evidence of that in, say, some more lights at t g milliner On #1..or even some grass.
$80k is a farce.
Easts RU are constantly raiding the juniors for money.
I sense long term danger in league clubs holding the purse strings of union clubs, social or otherwise.
There is a fundamental flaw in the approach of the ARU.
It's not a real business in the sense that it has not sold shares to the public who are looking for a financial return on their investment. Nor was it established with a view to carrying on business for a profit.
It is a community organization that exists to run the game in Australia. It is not in the business of making millionaires out of players: no player is worth more to the game, as a game, than any other. He might be more Important to the wallabies tonight or next week but I am talking of the game, as played in heaven.
Let's say that when the tv rights are renewed the ARU doubles it's take. That is a dividend referable to the countless volunteers and unpaid players. We may acquiesce in paying the big boys a lot of money to do something they love and which most did and do for nothing but in the end that can only be justified as an attempt to get more money into the game for the benefit of the game, which is the participants game not John oneills.
However, without ever having been authorized to do so, the ARU runs like a privately owned franchise in the NFL. The difference is that when it turns a profit there are no shareholders to whom the dividend may be paid. Rather some new position is created and an otherwise unemployable mate is given a job.
So the ARU takes the players developed by others for free, rides them for money and returns a lowly $1m to the pot for the whole of SE aus.
Ask yourself where this is going.. Is the "company" expanding? Are we the stakeholders being given the resources we deserve for the enjoyment of the players? what is the object here?
What is the ARUs charter?

Souths Juniors have been spoken about recently as Easts leagues take a backseat...

Even worse: one coach of souths juniors went out of his way to see to it that his players would not play union by staging training to clash with union game time.
It is all about the kids, after all.

There's can only be one outcome to such a move.

Spot on IS....but the clubs do get the 80K. If Easts seniors are plundering the juniors for money, then easts seniors have some serious financial management issues in my opinion. At Manly, the colts have a completely separate budget to that of the grade budget. And it is a fair bit trust me. The grade guys do not touch that in any way shape or form, so the grade side of things must be going very well. I am sure that a chunk of the 80K from ARU is what makes up the colts budget. And it is 80K.plus gst, as I have seen the invoices to NSWRU for payment.

But I completely agree with your comments above. Another thing to ask as well, what is the 5 year development plan for the game? Do they have one? And probably more importantly, what is the 5 year development plan for western sydney....where the GWS Giants have 9 fulltime development officers lobbying schools on a daily basis...

Under the John O'Neill/Matt Carroll school of ARU direction, it appears they are happy for the game to continually shrink in terms of viability of competitions as long as the niche schools continue to play the game on the upper north shore and eastern suburbs. 5% of Australias population lives between Parramatta and the blue mountains yet there is NO rugby development from the governing body going on. If they lose the west of sydney, they will NEVER get it back. And they'll then have to fork out the $1MIL salary to the kid from Bonnyrigg to play the game.....whereas that million should now be spent in developing the game. They have the funds, its just where they channell it that is the issue.

The same argument could be said for the development of the game in its heartland, the Gordon and Warringah districts. These are the 2 biggest districts in Sydney in terms of junior registrations. Yet the reason that is so is not because of ARU policy or funding, it is because a couple of blokes from the Northern Zone committee 10 years ago decided to move their game day from saturday to sunday to accommodate the private school players. Only after that worked did they decide (a decade later) to employ a development officer for the area.

The ARU remain a joke.....

Knuckles, we should get married I love your work.
Randwick juniors will not move their comp to sunday because they lose the league kids.
I thought the Marlins were in trouble financially - the Rats are I believe
Totally agree in relation to niche private schools.
In 1981 I had the bright idea that the Campbelltown harlequins should be brought into 1st division and supported because that was the population growth area. I was a student at the time. Of course no one in Crane Place was thinking beyond their next reschs.

I remember those dark days, although it was not as you described. There was a 1st and 2nd division with promotion and relegation of the top and bottom 2 teams, but it was based on the comp over the whole year. Once relegated to 2nd division, you were there for at least a year. It killed Drummoyne and UNSW as clubs in the top tier of the comp as they never recovered from relegation. Uni and Norths survived and both actually probably became stronger as a result of trying to avoid relegation again.
The only time I can remember split comp in the same year was a few years ago when Super Rugby was young and they had Shute Shield at the start of the year and then Premier Rugby (or something like that) in the 2nd half when the Super Rugby players came back. It was a farce and only lasted a year from memory.

I am sure there was a season in which everyone played everyone once and then the top 8 or something went off and played in one comp and the rest played in another: in that season there was no 2nd division. the early 80s are a bit of a blur but I couldnt have just imagined it.shit - maybe it was the 70s

You're definitely right, I remember it - probably late 70's as I was playing Colts then and remember it as an impact. At least in 1977, the two top Colts teams were Norths and Manly - by a country mile - they didn't get to play each other until the grand final, which Manly won ( they had the Cox brothers plus a wealth of other guys that went onto success in rugby, and league). Norths were in the A comp and Manly the B, if I remember correctly, and so their paths never crossed. Two incredibly talented teams.

Is moving juniors to sunday really the best way to do it?

I preface this by saying I know little about sydney junior rugby, but I would have thought we'd be better suited to follow the kiwi model and kill the junior club rugby at about 13 and have kids play for their school. Makes logistical sense with regards to training and the like, its just the competitive structures are not in place.

Maybe I'm just confused by what ages groups you are referring to when you say juniors.

I think that there are plenty out there in Heaven's Game that agree with the sentiment of Knuckles post.

Slightly off toppic but there are a number of Randwick teams competing in the "Northern Zone" or SJRU Sunday competition, particularly in the older age grades.

From under 14's on Mungoball player numbers in Souths/Easts area drops off significantly as well. I suspect that after about under 14's, Souths Juniors have already hooked their stars who are then given the option: be not available for Rugby fullstop; school or club, or District, and stay with Junior Bunnies, or be dropped from the Junior Bunnies programme. Plenty of recent debate on pro's and cons of the Heaven's Game vs Mungoball faced by up and coming dual code playing "stars" on other threads.

While the Sunday mungoball conflict is no longer the big threat to player numbers in a Easts/Randwick Sunday comp, there are plenty of players who are not available for Saturday Club footy due to Saturday School Footy. The drop off in performance at State Champs by Randwick teams in the older age groups, when they are very competitive in the Under 10's -Under 13's, is evidence of this. Same situation with the Easts Wallaroos.

Randwick started a Warriors club a couple of years back, and one team went all the way to Under 18's in the Sunday competition, winning a couple of premierships along the way. According to Junior Jarse, many of these former Randwick warriors are now playing wicks colts.

Easts Wallaroos seem to almost wholeheartely embraced the Sunday Competition idea, and their player numbers are increasing, while Randwicks appear to be declining. I make this conclusion based solely on the team numbers registered on the Buddha competition system from SJRU website.

Back on Thread topic:
With the wicks appearing to be in fiscal strife, along with the highlanders, who isn't? Are all the available $ for Senior Club footy being sucked up by fewer and fewer clubs?
Is this financial Cancer terminal and an inevitable consequence of Super Rugby?

Do we see a stage where the Shute Shield District clubs are merged into the Subbies competition? Weren't Gits and Schmoo registered with Balmain Subbies club?

The Kiwi model works because of the "religious" status of the code there. My friends from the land of the Darkness tell me that it is played in nearly every school and there is a unified Secondary Schools Rugby Union structure to manage the game. The equivalent to our GPS comp games (the historical and long established traditional "out of district" games) are typically played midweek. Weekend games are a mixture of public vs private schools.

We do not have the same universality here. Very few public schools have weekend sports options let alone rugby programmes. Those schools which have rugby programmes are generally within well established competition structures which are reluctant to accept change.

I vaguely recall that there is a Aust Secondary Schools Union, but by all accounts it is relatively toothless, and apart from being the brand owner of the Aust Schoolboys Team, they have little influence on the game. ARU keep them on a very tight chain, as any paymaster should. The heads of ISA, AAGPS (and equivalents in QLD) probably have more influence over Schoolboy rugby than the Secondary Schools Union.

In the ACT I believe that the situation is slightly different with clubs and schools playing in an integrated competition. Best of both worlds.