Steve Deane: Success comes from long-term view

Kirk Penney celebrates after Breakers won the grand final. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Last night may have heralded a breakthrough victory for a New Zealand sports team in an Australian club competition, but it's doubtful the Breakers' success constitutes the first trickle through a floodgate.

Basketball may have shown league and soccer - the other two codes whose efforts along with basketball add up to 34 completed seasons of toil - that it can be done.

The Breakers achieved their success by adopting a long-term view. In their third season they decided they had found the right coach and have stuck with him.

They have scouted, invested in and retained local talent. Tom Abercrombie, Mika Vukona, Corey Webster and Alex Pledger all started at the club on development contracts.

Paul Henare has been there from the start. Dillon Boucher was there at the start, returned to help engineer the breakthrough, and will almost certainly be there when his career comes to an end.

Kirk Penney, the competition's best player, came home despite the temptations of bigger and more lucrative leagues.

Marquee Australian talent CJ Bruton and two impressive Americans, Kevin Braswell and Gary Wilkinson, have complemented that Kiwi core. The Breakers are an impressive organisation on and off the court.

League and soccer could pick up some tips on the administration side, but of those two codes only soccer could directly replicate the Breakers' blueprint.

The Warriors may be following the same path of local player development, but they will never have basketball's international player market to call upon.

In league, the best Australians in the key playmaking positions will almost always opt for one of the 15 Australian clubs. If the Warriors are to follow in the Breakers' footsteps they must produce their own talent.

The Phoenix do have an accessible global market from which to recruit but seem unable to retain their best Kiwi players. In recent times Kiwi talents such as Shane Smeltz, Costa Barbarouses and Marco Rojas have slipped through the soccer club's hands.

The question now for the Breakers is whether the band can be kept together. Their champion players will receive good offers to move. Maybe some will. But at least they will do so having won a title. That's the ultimate blueprint for all New Zealand team sports, rugby included.