Rugby: Off-season recruitment urged

Erik Vaafusuaga.
Erik Vaafusuaga.
Recruit. Recruit. Recruit. That is about the best advice Taieri coach Erik Vaafusuaga can give the Pirates club.

The team from Hancock Park came very close to pulling out of its match with the Eels on Saturday. Pirates were down to two props and would have had to default had Taieri not agreed to bend the rules to accommodate the struggling team.

Pirates have had an horrific run of injuries, losing 16 players in the opening five weeks. While the club has been busy trying to recruit replacements, and an English prop is due to arrive this week, the situation remains tenuous.

‘‘They really do need to be looking at what they can do during the off-season,'' Vaafusuaga said.

‘‘They have been hanging on for the last one or two years. They can't keep living there.

‘‘It was a bit later in the season last year; it has come earlier this season and next year it could be right at the very start.

‘‘My advice to them is the recruitment needs to happen.''

Vaafusuaga empathises with Pirates. He was part of the Taieri team which had to pull out of the premier grade at the beginning of the 2001 season.

Taieri thought it would regroup and be back up and running the following season.

‘‘At that time we only had three front-rowers ... so we made the call and we were always thinking we were going to return the year after but it took eight years.''Taieri had planned to field a premier 2 side but could not stitch a team together, so Vaafusuaga went to play for Green Island.

‘‘It was hard. I always said I'd come back once we established ourselves back in prem 2s but even that took three years to do. It was a pretty long hard slog to get the players to come back.''

Rebuilding is not as simple as it sounds. And neither is recruitment. For Taieri the answer came when a core group returned from university and decided they wanted to ‘‘make a fist of it and go on to play prem 2s''.

‘‘The promise was always to come back so I did, and it took four or five years from the point to get back to prems.''

It came as a huge relief to the team when it beat University B in the promotion-relegation game and the club went on to win the senior banner in 2011, 2012 and 2014.

‘‘We respect Pirates for wanting to put a team out there,'' Vaafusuaga said

‘‘Most clubs are happy to allow so much leeway but they can't have it for the rest of the season.''

Asked if he thought a 10-team premier grade was sustainable in the long term, Vaafusuaga acknowledged he had some doubts.

‘‘I always say that it is the second round that teams - possibly like Pirates, Zingari and Green Island - when they get a few injuries they just aren't able to go the whole two rounds.''

Vaafusuaga believes the key to a club's long-term health is keeping the connections with junior players when they go off to secondary school.

‘‘It is about trying to bridge that gap and get those players coming back.

‘‘I don't know how they [Pirates] do it but that is certainly something that needs to be looked at.''

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