Leading All Blacks may be rested during next year’s Super 15 in order to ensure that they will be fit for the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand later in the year.
Sport24
According to the Rugby Week website, All Blacks coach Graham Henry came under fire in 2007 for his reconditioning programme which saw the New Zealand’s leading players pulled out of the Super 14 for half of the season.
The Super 15 kicks off in 2011 with a much more demanding programme and Henry says that he plans to pull players in a similar fashion to what he did in 2007.
Henry says that he will meet with New Zealand Super 15 coaches shortly to discuss the increased workload imposed on players by the expansion of Super Rugby from 14 to 15 teams in 2011.
He said top players would have to be carefully managed to ensure they avoid burnout in a lengthened season.
Henry’s comments were echoed later Wednesday by Reds Super 15 coach Ewen McKenzie, who said he would combat the lengthened 2011 season by implementing a rotation policy which would extend to the Wallabies duo of Will Genia and Quade Cooper.
FIVE WEEKS LONGER
The length of the Super rugby season will increase from 16 to 21 weeks with the addition of a fifth Australian franchise and both Henry and McKenzie said the burden on players would grow with the additional matches.
“The main difference would be the load,” McKenzie said.
“It’s just literally longer and we found when we went from Super 12 to Super 14 (in 2006) there was a big difference. It doesn’t sound like much when you say it but the bodies have to get used to that.”
“It means the rotation of players will be a bit more relevant.” Henry said it was “ridiculous” to think any player could play in every week of the new tournament.
“I just think guys need to make sensible decisions so that people play at a high standard all the time and we will be discussing that with the Super 15 coaches in late September,” he said.
Henry said each team would receive two byes in the season and spelling players for an additional two weeks to ensure they had four weeks off during the season was “a reasonably logical way of looking at it.”
September 1st, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Let’s hope we come up with a logical way of dealing with the extra matches…
http://fromthebottomoftheruck.blogspot.com/
September 1st, 2010 at 11:05 pm
I can only see the whole competition
being devalued because of too many
games.
Franchises will have to add onto
their squads and reserves too.
September 1st, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Henry is right, they cannot play the whole S15 and RWC………but will he be able to? The NZ public still blame his ‘rotation’ policy for their loss at RWC’07.
I hope Snor listens to Noakes and gets the franchises to cooperate. They should be working out a deal now, not in the middle of next years season. Something along the lines of allowing the contracted players only ‘x’ number of S15 games, and never more than 4 or 5 in a row. They will then have to spread their game time out a bit and will be in the ‘big’ matches.
However I doubt whether common sense will prevail and this time next year we will be in panic mode with Januarie still on the bench, no back-up 10, a pick-up center pairing, an out-of-sorts Habana on one wing and JdV filling in as the other, and mummy as FB.
September 1st, 2010 at 11:30 pm
What about if they could choose a larger squad of players, so players would not have to play every game ?
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:56 am
Jake White also had the SA franchises pull players but he was far far cleverer than the All Blacks about it…
In his case the desiganted core players played about eight games and were rested against weaker teams…
Heyneke Meyer and Dick Muir were very good about this issue. I believe that for the good of SA now is the time to discuss the issue.
The problem with Henry’s approach was he didn’t REST the players he pulled but used the time to CONDITION them more… which meant absolutely zip when they went to RWC at the end of the season…
Reply to Treehugger @ 11:30 pm:
It’s what happened in 2007 so we can hope
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:23 am
You have to wonder as well what all the expansion is about. The last time I enjoyed the super competition was when it was the S12 as in most of the season, not just the odd game as in the S14. There’s just too much rugby on now.
http://fromthebottomoftheruck.blogspot.com/