League: Swords stars face slog

The challenge for this year's crop of Northern Swords players will be to soak up the technical expertise that their coaches expose them to.

Rugby League Northland chief executive, Alex Smits, said the Swords' junior trial and coaching camp on Sunday at Kensington Park unearthed plenty of talent, but it will have to be carefully coached in order to achieve maximum results.

"There was a lot of raw talent at the park but technically they are very green, all of those boys can run, pass and tackle, but it's the little subtleties of the game that they are lacking," he said.

The junior players went through a coaching camp supervised by national rugby league development officers Ruben Wiki and Tony Kemp, before representative trials for the 15s and 17s in the afternoon.

"There was a great turnout of players - most of whom I've never seen before - some very good quality players came out of the woodwork, so that's encouraging," Smits said.

The two junior squads and the senior squad will be named next week and Smits said they will all be a part of the same training squad initially.

"The squads will all try and play a similar type of game, so the coaching will be very similar and the head coaches of all three teams will be getting together to work on the technical aspects of the game they want their teams to learn," he said.

The most important areas to begin with, will be the tackle and the play-the-ball area.

-- Smits said there was plenty of work to do but that time and time again, the most organised teams have proved they can beat the best teams in rugby league.

The senior team will be coached again by Joe Rau, with Benson Selwyn the head coach of the 17s. Kaitaia's Jimmy Larkins continues his long and successful association with the 15s.