HAMISH BIDWELL
It's shades of the pub with no beer.
Graham Barlow (below) may have re-signed as coach of the mighty Stags for another two seasons, but it will be some time before he returns to work with last summer's State Championship-winning team.
With the bulk of the team in Australia with the
New Zealand A squads and a few others playing in the Northern Hemisphere, Barlow will resemble a coach without a team when fitness testing starts at Pettigrew-Green Arena next week.
Not that he's panicking, though. Their absences will give him an opportunity to become more familiar with the new faces who are likely to emerge from Central Districts' list of contracted players, released on Monday.
"Ewen Thompson, Greg Hegglun and Geoff Barnett are all playing overseas. Thommo is in Ireland, Heggs is in England and Barney's in Canada and then we've got Jamie How, Michael Mason, Mathew Sinclair, Ross Taylor and Brendon Diamanti with New Zealand A," said Barlow.
"So we will be a little bit thin (for the camp) but we had a similar situation last year and that's basically the nature of our set-up."
With Jarrod Engelfield gone and How, Mason, Sinclair, Taylor and Jacob Oram all on New Zealand contracts, Barlow says he may see very little of last season's first-stringers, anyway.
"I think the challenge for us, is that we're going to have to cope with any number of different scenarios. For instance, we could go the season and not have a single Black Cap, or we could go the season with all our Black Caps," he said.
"Obviously with the World Cup coming up I think we'd certainly lose Michael and Ross and maybe Jamie too."
