Opinion: Hawke's Bay club premier men's rugby scores demand revamping of competition

NOBM have dominated for three seasons but is the Hawke's Bay premier men's club rugby competition about to detonate?

Here are some of the numbers at a cursory glance — 95-0, 87-0, 76-0, 74-5, 73-7 — and, no, they aren't the Hawks basketball franchise team's projected scores in the NBL this winter.

They are actually results from the Tui Nash Cup premier club rugby competition in Hawke's Bay although sports followers could be forgiven for doing a double take to see if they weren't reading the Sal's National Basketball League outcomes from a weekend.

So how good is the elite men's rugby union competition in the province?

Judging by some of the scores every weekend it isn't very endearing. The 55-5 and 52-18 outcomes in the quarter-finals, never mind games defaulted for whatever reasons, do little to suggest the strugglers in the 10-team competition would have warmed up to the task when the business end had beckoned.

It doesn't help that even those who don't religiously follow the premier club competition will tell you WIT-sponsored Napier Old Boys' Marist (NOBM) team again will walk off with just about every bling going this winter, including the mind-numbing 20th consecutive defence of the Hawke's Bay Challenge Shield, barring an upset of gargantuan proportions that is symptomatic of false economies.

No doubt, NOBM followers probably can't see why anything should change considering their ascendancy in the past few seasons.

However, the bigger picture suggests change is inevitable to maintain any credibility in the competition.

Perhaps the most worrying factor is how good a platform does the Nash Cup and impending Maddison Trophy provide for the selection of Hawke's Bay Magpies with the second-tier Mitre 10 Cup championship looming.

More questions crop up than answers.

How did NOBM create such a yawning gulf in the past few years at the expense of other clubs?

Does the Hawke's Bay Rugby Football Union (HBRFU) have a policy to help prop up the perennial strugglers for the benefit of ensuring the premier club competitions remain meaningful exercises?

If the depth in talent isn't in the Bay right now then where can the elite teams play decent opposition to gauge their worth?

Will the merger of teams be a more prudent approach than trying to sustain an adulterated 10-team competition in the eye of the public?

The answers, it seems, may lie somewhere between some of the questions above.

It's not too outlandish to suggest the HBRFU should pit the top four teams against those of Manawatu.

The province on the other side of the gorge has had the wood on the Magpies for the past few seasons so one could argue top Bay sides playing against Manawatu counterparts will only lift standards.

Isolation is a dangerous position. The Silver Ferns dilemma, post-ANZ Championship, after Australia's decision to break away is a great example of that.

Travelling is always going to be a factor in club rugby but it need not be a mammoth exercise. Teams could meet perhaps at Dannevirke venues to play in a competition called "Mag-Turbo Charger", which could easily become a scouting stage for the Hurricanes as well.

Just as the Vikings gave a glimpse of a semi-professional franchise structure soon after Super Rugby was born, such an inter-provincial club competition between neighbouring regions could become a pioneering cross-pollination ritual.

On the flip side, the HBRFU could woo Wairoa into the HB premier competition with the rest of the teams who don't make the cull for the inter-provincial club event.

If that's not enough, there's no harm in HBRFU putting its feelers out to Taupo to see if it could have the potential of a triangular competition.

I asked around and someone informed me Napier High School Old Boys merged with Marist in 1990 to form NOBM for a stronger presence, which has only materialised in the past few years — 27 years is a long time.

In the yesteryear, a sub-union day used to lure elite representative teams from each sub-union — Central Hawke's Bay, Dannevirke, Hastings, Napier, Wairoa and possibly former affiliates Taupo — to play against each other as a dress rehearsal for the selection of the Magpies.

"There used to be real competition to represent your sub-union and then Hawke's Bay," the stalwart tells me.

"Ross Shield [primary/intermediate rep schoolboy rugby] also used to include Taupo."

If the grassroots level thrives again the need to recruit pedigree players from outside the province to slip on the Magpies jersey will become minimal, if not redundant.

Lending Magpies to struggling clubs, a governor-general-type ceremonial exercise in previous seasons, is expected to be more productive this season but that is no guarantee the gulf in standards will be bridged.