Format change means Bay colts have bolted

WINNING FEELING: Tauranga Sports players celebrate after winning last year's Baywide final.PHOTO/FILE

The implementation of a compulsory development competition for all premier clubs has led to the demise of the colts competition in the Bay of Plenty.

Rumours of a breakdown between the Bay of Plenty Rugby Union and the clubs on the competition format had been swirling for weeks, leading to some clubs pulling out of the colts competition due to lack of money, or numbers, or both.

By Wednesday's launch even the powerful Mount Maunganui Colts - one of only two teams still dedicated to the competition - had pulled the pin after investigating the possibility of playing in Waikato.

"The colts guys coming into the development - that's my biggest problem at the moment," said Mount coach Rodney Voullaire.

"Poor kids, eh? We've just pulled them out. All the colts have gone out of the Bay union. We tried to get them over to the Waikato, they said yes but overall it was going to be too much to get them over there.

"We're hoping ... I don't know what we're hoping, to be honest. I've got 19 kids I've got to fit into a development team, and I've already got a development team."

Voullaire, a supporter in theory of the development competition, saw myriad problems with the current competition structure.

"Playing senior rugby at 18? We'll see how it goes. When I look at college kids compared with club players it's a huge difference.

"It's concerning. Only a small percentage of those guys will make it to premier rugby. My parents didn't let me play senior rugby until I was 21. I was still developing at that age.

"I'm not going to put any kid on the park unless I know they're fully developed to play against seniors. Otherwise you're looking at injuries. You wouldn't want to be a parent on the sideline watching that."

Bay of Plenty Rugby Union chief executive Mike Rogers said the colts grade had fallen over late last week.

"It happened pretty quickly. Last week we had a competition of five or six teams, but then a couple of teams notified the union they were going to withdraw from that competition, and obviously that put pressure on us to run a competition. You can't run a competition with three or four teams.

"We were aware the new competition had the potential to have an impact on that development competition, as club teams, quite rightly, are using that as their feeder competition to the premier competition. That's where a lot of young players have gravitated to.

"It's hugely disappointing to not have a colts grade but our senior team numbers look like they are going to be slightly up on last year.

"We've worked really hard over the last two years to get an under-19 competition up and running with clubs, and haven't been able to get any traction with clubs."