Rest and recovery breaks happening at all levels of rugby

Peter Lampp is an experienced sports commentator and former sports editor based in Manawatū.

OPINION: While the weekly resting of our best rugby players is getting on everyone’s nerves, it has to happen unless we rate the less-than-Super Rugby ahead of the World Cup.

Not me. Maybe a mid-season break to give every team a breather might be sensible.

This resting is happening at all levels. Does club rugby rate ahead of NPC rugby and the Manawatū Turbos? There’s no quick answer.

The game has become brutal. Get up close to Manawatū club rugby on Saturdays and you’ll wince at the big hits. Varsity have had almost a XV wounded out every Saturday.

READ MORE:
* Front row critical for Manawatū under conference system
* College face stern test against Yellows in top-of-the-table clash
* Newton Tudreu returns as Manawatū Turbos squad takes shape

Every season, club coaches get riled up by the limited minutes applied to their best players by the Manawatū academy and Turbos people and say they’re confused about which players they can play.

And yet an email is sent out each week with the minutes listed. Some players are rested with head knocks, which no-one can argue with, but come Saturdays players often claim they’re fully fit, contrary to the opinion of the strength-and-conditioning guy.

Last season’s Turbos coach Peter Russell just ploughed on and ignored the outside noise because his job was to field a Turbos team of semi-professionals, having first call ahead of the amateur clubs.

When higher teams come calling, it’s different. College Old Boys have four away with national under-20 squads and Kia Toa and Freyberg one each. That’s a positive for Manawatū and clubs live with it.

Early in the season, College had to sub off five players who were on restricted time limits midway through the second half. Kia Toa instantly got on a roll and almost stole the game.

But rather than starting their best, perhaps COB could have shuttled them on midway through the first half. After club rugby, once the Hankins Shield final is done, everyone switches to the Turbos’ cause and to who isn’t crocked.

Two weeks ago, last year’s NZ Schools captain Vernon Bason played for COB against Varsity, a game he would’ve been better off bypassing with a NZ 20s camp a week away. Sure enough, at about the hour mark, bang he went down with a suspected blown quadricep which might have blown his under-20 World Cup chances.

We have since heard it was bruising, but it was a big scare.

Check out this injury list of prospective Manawatu players: prop Flyn Yates (calf tear), hooker Leif Schwencke (shoulder), locks Josh Taula (groin) and Micaiah Torrance-Read (knee), No 8 Tyler Laubscher (knee) and first-five Brett Cameron (knee).

Flanker Johnny Galloway played his first game last Saturday after another hamstring injury, while prop Joe Gavigan came off with concussion in the same game. Varsity also have former Counties Manukau and Taranaki lock Mickey Woolliams, but he’s out with a busted foot.

Lock is an area of concern but we note a big man from Wellington, Anthony Pettett, has been brought into the Evergreens trial games. He is a 2.01m Johnsonville lock and captain who was once in a NZ Schools training squad.

Former Feilding coach Nathan Williams and current COB coach Bryan Matenga are taking the backup Evergreens XV this season. Williams has also brought in another Johnsonville forward, 30-year-old former Wellington prop Ha’amea Ahio.

Old Boys-Marist hooker Chris Cairns needs to be in the mix too after last week being one injury away from playing for the Hurricanes in Hamilton. He has been dynamic this year and no surprise OBM had their first loss last Saturday without him.

Former Cyclones women’s coach and Manawatū performance manager Fusi Feaunati is off to Wellington Rugby to run the NZ women’s hub there under his former Manawatū chief executive Shannon Paku.

When the performance manager job was created last year it was controversial, many deeming such a position unnecessary in a smaller union, and it’s understood it will stay vacant this year.

Meanwhile, former Oroua favourite Jason Holland copped it for resting Ardie Savea, Jordie Barrett and Tyrel Lomax. Maybe Holland’s timing was odd, but had he rested them at home the previous week against Moana Pasifika, Hurricanes season ticket-holders would’ve kicked up.

The NRL doesn’t insist on resting their well-paid livestock, and probably should. But they do have the State of Origin series in the guts of their club season which will give the Warriors a big chance at Napier against a Broncos outfit stripped of five Origin stars.

Today’s rugby players aren’t playing the rugby of the 1970s and 1980s. In those days All Black Gary Knight would play a test match on Saturday and turn out for High School Old Boys on the Sunday. But those guys still sport lifelong scars from rucking.

Further back the All Blacks embarked on tours north with 30 players to cover 36 games, two games a week, plus train travel. Times change.