Rugby: Shelford pleads for NPC change

By Chris Rattue

Former All Black captain Wayne Shelford has called for a revamp of the domestic rugby calendar to bolster the club game.

Shelford had canvassed his idea earlier this year in a media column and made another push for changes following his North Harbour side's 16-23 NPC defeat against Auckland at Albany on Saturday night.

Shelford believes the NPC competition should be run at the same time as the Super 12, which would enable the Super 12 teams to call on fit, match-ready replacement players.

But the main purpose behind his idea is to put more profile and quality into the beleaguered club scene around the country, and thus keep the traditional steps of the game in place.

He said that if his idea were adopted, the players' contracts with the New Zealand Rugby Football Union would include the understanding that they would be available for club rugby if required.

That would mean players who missed out on All Black and other representative selection would play for clubs.

Shelford suggested the New Zealand union was only paying lip service to the plight of the club game, and offering only token gestures as solutions.

"This year they [the NZRFU] announced that all the club finals would be played on the same weekend. Well, whoopee," Shelford said.

"A lot of our players go overseas and end up playing club football anyway, so why not have them playing here?

"I raised the idea three months ago and got positive and negative reactions.

"I suppose the rugby union sees it has two cash cows now [Super 12 and NPC] and wouldn't want to lose that.

"But we need to raise the level of club football - there are no stars there any more."

Shelford's comments were not raised in response to any particular problem North Harbour encountered in Saturday night's game.

But Harbour do have one significant problem area, their scrum, after losing four tighthead props - including imports Simon Halford and Fosi Pala'amo - who have been laid low by various degrees of injury.

It meant Harbour had to introduce Hona Kingi, a player Shelford said had only just broken into the B-team, late in the match.

Auckland had a crucial advantage in the scrums, although that was negated on a couple of occasions when referee Colin Hawke called for resets, even though the Auckland scrum had gone through their Harbour opposites without breaking the 90 degrees.

Auckland captain and prop Paul Thomson said: "There were a couple of times I thought we'd gone straight through them but it is a tough area for referees to call."

It was a match which mixed moments of excellence with long periods of fairly inept tactical kicking. Harbour's cause was not helped either by going into the game without halfback Mark Robinson, who was admitted to hospital last week with an abscess on his leg.

A 16th-minute try to Auckland lock Charles Riechelmann, after Carlos Spencer danced his way out of trouble, Xavier Rush carried the move on, and Mark Carter held up a perfect pass for Riechelmann, helped Auckland to a 10-9 halftime lead.

North Harbour led 16-10 early in the second spell after fullback Glenn Davis latched on to a chip-kick from Ofisa Tonu'u and raced 40m for a try.

But Auckland prevailed, with Rush and Cashmore doing the build-up work for a Steve Devine try, just after the Aussie import had come on for Tonu'u, and Spencer completed the job with a 50m penalty after Cashmore declined the long shot at goal.

Rush was one of the game's standout players, while the Auckland midfield of Eroni Clarke and Craig Innes, who had a strong match, showing some added speed to go with his strength, held sway over fellow All Blacks Walter Little and Glen Osborne.

Auckland coach Wayne Pivac said: "We made a lot of errors in the first half, but our defence scrambled very well.

"The error rate was pretty high but it was very slippery out there."