Rugby league on a mission in HB

Former Hawke's Bay Unicorns rugby league coach Alan Jackson (right) pictured in another attempt to develop the game in the Bay in 2012. Photo/file

A new move to re-energise rugby league in Hawke's Bay is being made at a public meeting in Hastings today to discuss the future of the code in the region.

Billed as a Rugby League Community Meeting it's being called by the New Zealand Rugby League's Mid-Central Zone and will be held at Hastings Intermediate School, starting at 6pm.

Mid-Central manager Lisa Reweti, of Palmerston North, will attend the meeting with zone board Hawke's Bay member Neil Cleaver and Alan Jackson, who coached premier representative side the Unicorns in a startling revival of the game in the region in the early 1990s.

The meeting follows her attendance at a meeting to review the Hawke's Bay spring-season competition, which started in August and ended last month.

End-of-year meetings had been held elsewhere in the zone in Taranaki and Manawatu, which stage their competitions in the winter, but Ms Reweti said the Hawke's Bay meeting would be "a little bit different."

She said there are "programmes" that haven't been running in Hawke's Bay that the league community needs to know about, and the Mid Central Zone administration, put in place seven years ago in a restructuring of the game throughout the country needs to "show what it can offer Hawke's Bay."

Youth academies are in place in other areas and the zone wishes to see a similar operation in Hawke's Bay, but more viable structures need to be put in place supporting clubs, refereeing and other aspects of the game.

She said there is a need to get Hawke's Bay players on to a pathway to national tournaments and national selection, and need for rugby league to be available in the area in the winter.

"We are going to find out what is in place," Ms Reweti said.

The zone is inviting past and present club members, players, coaches, referees and "anyone interested in supporting rugby league pathways in Hawke's Bay," with some hope of capitalising on current heightened interest sparked by the Rugby League World Cup in New Zealand, Australia and Papua New Guinea.