NRL: Digging deep for vintage mixture

Steve Price has 302 NRL games under his belt. Photo / Getty Images

If Steve Price needed any reminding that the NRL is a young man's game, it's standing in front of him every week.

At 35, Price is the oldest player in the league. He's also the most experienced with 302 games under his belt.

Statistics based on each club's top 25 players reveal the average age of an NRL player is 24.1 years and the average number of games 70.16, or the rough equivalent of three full seasons.

It is further proof NRL is a tough game and many players simply can't survive long-term.

Players over the age of 30 are becoming as rare as Manly wins and Price finds himself one of only 27 running around over 30 and the only one to have played more than 300 first-grade games. He will soon be joined by Darren Lockyer (296) and Hazem El Masri (295).

Price's statistics impact on the overall makeup of the Warriors - helping to make them the most experienced team in the NRL.

Their top 25 players have played a combined 2124 games at an average of 84.96 each. The Bulldogs are next with 2121 games while the Raiders are the least experienced with 1459 games.

But the Warriors are by no means the oldest team, even though they have Price and Stacey Jones, 32, within their ranks.

With an average age of 24.16, the Warriors are right on the average and it would fall to 23.72 without Price.

This mix of youth and experience isn't a coincidence.

"Part of our philosophy is to try to build a long-term team based on players with a lot of experience," Warriors director of football John Hart says. "Those figures probably show we are achieving what we set out to do."

Although Price and Jones skew the statistics a little, it needs to be remembered the Warriors waved goodbye to 98 years and 669 games in the shape of Ruben Wiki, Wairangi Koopu and Logan Swann at the end of last year.

There are still plenty of youngsters running around Mt Smart Stadium. NRL regulars Russell Packer (19), Ben Matulino (20) and Joel Moon (20) wouldn't be able to legally buy alcohol in the US while Denan Kemp (21) only just qualifies.

On the fringe are the likes of Patrick Ah Van (21), Leeson Ah Mau (20) and Daniel O'Regan (20).

Even Simon Mannering and Sam Rapira are still just 22 and Manu Vatuvei 23 but they are virtually NRL veterans with 225 games between them.

Sometimes this accent on youth is down to circumstance. The Warriors don't have a reserve-grade side - some of their fringe players turn out for the Auckland Vulcans in the NSW Cup - and the difficulty in managing the salary cap means youngsters from the under-20s are often called upon sooner than they might otherwise have been.

The Warriors think their recruitment policy is different to rival NRL clubs. The aim is sustained, long-term success - making the top eight every year sprinkled with the occasional standout year.

Winning the title is an obvious goal but keeping a broadly experienced squad is important because a premiership puts pressure on clubs to keep a squad together when title-winning players expect more money and bust the salary cap.

Most clubs stack their squad with two or three match-winners on significant money and fit the rest of the squad around them. That is reliant on a small number of individuals performing and staying injury-free.

Price and Brent Tate are the highest earners at the Warriors but it's believed there is a relatively even spread throughout the squad - akin to a socialist model where greater prosperity is enjoyed by more.

Some like Mannering, Ropati and Lance Hohaia, who all signed extensions recently, are understood to have forgone more money elsewhere in the hope of regular success coming to Mt Smart Stadium.

Other signings are based on potential in the hope they become top-class players, like Moon and Kemp.

"To win the NRL, one of the things you need is depth as well as width," Hart says. "The width is having a lot of players with experience and that's one of the things we are starting to grow.

"I think we are developing a very different recruitment model [from other clubs]. We look at a succession plan three or four years in advance. We are constantly reviewing and evaluating which players we think can go on for a certain length of time and also at the young players coming through."

They have certainly signed a number of those players to long-term deals, meaning the core of their side will remain at Mt Smart Stadium regardless of what happens.

Mannering, Ropati, Rapira and Packer are all signed through to the end of 2012, while McKinnon, Moon, Vatuvei and Hohaia, who re-signed yesterday, will remain at Mt Smart until at least 2011.

Price is still considering whether he will go for one more season in 2010. If he does, he will become even more of a statistical anomaly.

THE OVER-30 CLUB

35 Steve Price (Warriors - 302 games)

34 Wendell Sailor (Dragons - 201)

33 Hazen El Masri (Bulldogs - 295), Adam MacDougall (Knights - 159)

32 Petero Civoniceva (Panthers - 240), Stacey Jones (Warriors - 241), Brett Kimmorley (Bulldogs - 265), Darren Lockyer (Broncos - 296), Scott Logan (Raiders - 139), Luke Stuart (Rabbitohs - 200)

31 Trent Barrett (Sharks - 202), Preston Campbell (Titans - 207), Shane Elford (Panthers - 131), Craig Fitzgibbon (Roosters - 245), Corey Hughes (Sharks - 217), David Kidwell (Rabbitohs - 200), Luke Priddis (Dragons - 289),

30 Colin Best (Rabbitohs - 174), Ben Cross (Knights - 69), Joe Galuvao (Eels - 138), Matt Orford (Manly - 208), Frank Puletua (Panthers - 149), Andrew Ryan (Bulldogs - 221), Glen Turner (Raiders - 88), Rhys Wesser (Rabbitohs - 179)