League hopes to zone in on brighter future

Northland rugby league players now have something to aspire to thanks to a national overhaul of the game's infrastructure.
Seven new zones have been created to get rugby league back on track in New Zealand. There is now a Northern Zone which incorporates Northland and North Harbour.
A general manager (currently being recruited) will  oversee and govern the zone for New Zealand Rugby League.
The Northern Zone board has already been elected, led by chairman Bruce Peden along with Peter Van Kampen, Jaine Lovell-Gadd, Thomas Jackson and Whangarei's Sharon Bird.
Once the general manager is in place they will be responsible for supporting all the clubs in their zone to grow the game, raise its profile and offer those interested opportunities to play league, New Zealand Rugby League marketing and sponsorship manager Trina Tamati said.
Those opportunities will come with an interclub competition, where selectors can pick representative teams for the zones, who will then contest the National Premier Competition (instead of the old Bartercard competition), starting in September.
From the zonal competition, a NZ Residents team will be chosen to play a Pacific Island team later in the year.
"The residents side is one potential pathway into our Kiwis team for those players based in New Zealand," Tamati said.
The system is more structured and a lot simpler than it used to be, she said.
The season lasts longer and there is an opportunity to grow the game nationally.
"Over the past few months, our focus has been 'grow the game and they will come' ... hopefully!"
At the end of 2008, rugby league was in dire straits nationally, with dwindling numbers and interest in the game, and with no clear pathways for up and coming players to develop their game to an elite level.
If you were not lucky enough to be spotted at a club game, it was a hard road to make it to representative sides like the Warriors, or the Kiwis, Tamati said.
Huge gaps between the level of football being played, and the organisation of the game in different regions, began to appear.
"Some regions were doing whatever they wanted, they had their own set of rules - and even though these regions were governed by the NZRL, rules were often not adhered to."
Northland, despite boasting many promising players, was an area which fell into an abyss.
They were excluded from the six districts who contested the national provincial championships (junior and senior divisions) in recent years, due to a lack of junior teams playing in regular competitions.
A year-long Sport and Recreation New Zealand investigation in 2009  found rugby league needed to attract more players nationally.
"NZRL employed Jim Doyle as the new CEO, and the first goal he had to kick was to design a strategic plan to grow participation.
"We restructured the districts and club framework, and set up the seven zones - Southern, Wellington, Lower Central, Mid Central, Counties Manukau, Auckland and Northern."
NZRL are hopeful interest in league will rebuild.
With the huge popularity of the NRL here, there is definitely the potential for that to happen with the right support systems in place, Tamati said.