LEAGUE - North U15s `should be NZ champs'

We have to push hard to strengthen our junior competitions so we can get back into the good books of the NZRL.Rere-Moana Lee, Whangarei and Districts junior committee chairWhile the Northland under-15s are national champions in the eyes of local league fans, they aren't seen that way by the New Zealand Rugby League.
The Northland under-15 team swept all before them at what they believed was a national tournament in Rotorua in July.
Admittedly, there were only four teams at the tournament, but Whangarei and Districts junior committee chairperson Rere-Moana Lee said just because a number of teams pulled out of the competition, that shouldn't mean the status of the tournament was downgraded.
"I was at the meeting when Bay of Plenty put their application in to hold the national under-15s tournament and there was plenty of support for the idea and as far as I was aware, the tournament had been sanctioned by the NZRL," she said.
But NZRL high performance manager Tony Kemp said the tournament didn't have an official sanction as a national tournament but was instead regarded as a regional tournament. He said that without Auckland, Wellington or Canterbury attending, it couldn't be seen as a national competition.
What specifically got under his skin was that the tournament team, selected from the best players at the Rotorua event, had passed itself off as a national team.
He had been overwhelmed by calls from parents asking what the national under-15 team's schedule was for the rest of the season.
"The tournament held in the Bay of Plenty was not to pick a national representative team for the under-15s; it picked its own tournament team and basically, that was it," Kemp said.
One of the Bay of Plenty tournament organisers Len Reid said invitations had gone out to all the provinces in the country and, although Auckland had turned down the invitation, Canterbury had accepted and only pulled out at the last minute.
Kemp said there was no national under-15 competition this year.
"[That is] because the national competition is a 16s and 18s tournament which kicks off on August 24 ... but Northland are not part of that competition because they have not got a sustainable junior competition and that's what we're looking for in our provinces because we're trying to build the game," he said.
Kemp said financial constraints meant the NZRL could no longer afford to run a "welfare state for the provinces".
"Northland isn't the only province that hasn't been included in the national competition ... the challenge [for these provinces] is to get a structure in place that provides meaningful local [junior] competitions," he said.
Lee did agree with Kemp on one thing - that the Whangarei and Districts Rugby League needed to work harder to consolidate the progress they had made in running the contests this year.
"We have to push hard to strengthen our junior competitions so we can get back into the good books of the NZRL so our boys can get back into the NJC competition as soon as possible," she said.
Meanwhile the under-15s will have a chance to back up their claim to national champion status when they face Auckland in a match on September 27.