Warren Kearney. PHOTO: GREGOR RICHARDSON Otago Rugby Football Union community rugby manager Warren Kearney is upbeat about the challenges ahead for the sport. He is not convinced the standard of play has dropped significantly, and described the quality of the Dunedin division 1 grade as ‘‘pretty good across the board’’. He is not overly concerned about player depth. And while he agrees the players have got younger during the past decade, they have also got fitter and stronger. ‘‘Look at what the First XVs are doing in today's game,’’ he said. ‘‘They're training like professional teams in terms of what they're doing. So I'd argue the kids that are coming out of school could actually be coming through at a higher capability rate than 10 years ago. ‘‘When I was playing, you might have an outside back coming straight out of school, whereas now there's a whole lot more players that are coming through. ‘‘But then you have some teams, like Southern, and they've got a number of guys there in their mid-30s plying their trade.’’ Otago Rugby Football Union statistics show the average age of a division 1 player has climbed slightly from 22.97 years in 2023 to 23.34 years in 2026. There are also more players. Registrations for the five men’s senior grades are up from 1602 last year to 1665 this season. But some of that growth has been in the division 2 colts, which is a more social grade. It has expanded from 13 teams in 2021 to 16 teams in 2026. Also, the size of division 1 squads have ballooned. That has put pressure on the top colts grade, which has dropped from nine teams last year to six teams this season. Those top colts players have been the future division 1 players. ‘‘I think what we're seeing, and in conversations with our clubs, is we're getting more players wanting to play happily in the colts space in the under-21s, which we'd call our more social colts. ‘‘But there wouldn't be many provincial unions that would say they've got 22 under-21 grade teams in their province.’’ Zingari-Richmond sticks out as the club which faces the most challenges around player depth. Its division 2 team dropped out of the grade partway through the season, and it did not field a division 1 colts team. That means the club has to lean on recruitment more heavily. ‘‘In a perfect world, we'd have all of the clubs sending a team through each of the grades and feeding through the system,’’ Kearney said, adding not everyone wanted to play at the top level. But he felt overall, the snapshot was brighter than some people believe. “Communities are changing, we know that. But I look at our junior rugby and we've still got 110 junior rugby teams playing this year, and it's on par with looking back to 2011, where we had 100. “Across a Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon, rugby's happening at every piece of grass that we can get our hands on at the moment. “I think sometimes you need to take a step back, because actually there's a lot of good things happening.’’ Zingari-Richmond address the issue of player depth in part two next week.
