There's good reason to wish good luck to coaches Darryl Malcolm and Carl Gibson and their new experimental Wanganui Metro Colts rugby team, who will enter Manawatu's under 21 competition in a fortnight.
I first got wind of this new outfit a while ago from Black Bull Liquor Pirates coach Phillip 'Red' Morris, who is a real supporter of the concept of setting up a team for local school leavers to stay in the game, while providing Whanganui a missing bridge for development from schoolboy into adult rugby.
I'm on the record with my big issue of local schools taking all their teams to the Manawatu union auspices, remembering the big kerfuffle two years ago when even the under 15s packed up their bags, and the loss of independence and focus for the local game which comes from that.
But Colts, in essence 'Young Adult' rugby, is a different matter.
I was one of those young men who back in 1998 in Nelson did not want to necessarily leave rugby, but felt rugby was leaving me.
Never more than an average, although enthusiastic, team player, I came to the age of 17 to find I was not one of the top 26 prospects at Waimea College aged 15-17 who would make the First XV.
I was somewhere in that next tier, and too old for the school's under-16 squad.
And so that was it. Time to just focus on a part time job and getting the grades up with university looming on the horizon, while enjoying a Saturday morning sleep-in.
I've often wondered if I could have continued on in some adult-playing capacity, possibly the 'C' Grade social stuff you find in the bigger cities where I have worked, if I would have had some way to stay on the field during those pivotal final 12 months of adolescence.
Rugby in Nelson, thanks to the advent of the Tasman union and pumping of cash into coaching development programmes, has grown the sport so most colleges now have 2nd and even 3rd XV's which allows them to keep fostering the handful of 'not quite ready' youngsters among team-mates who still just play for fun.
But Whanganui still has that malaise of the small demographic of immediate post-school lads, and for some 'boys' who do not consider themselves ready for senior club rugby, the thought or first hand experience of getting run over by adults every week is both demoralising and discouraging.
I am aware a number of clubs are concerned about losing decent players to the Metro team, as a conversation I had this week with one Premier coach revealed a player he has had for two seasons has joined Malcolm and Gibson's crew.
However, I still come down on the side of Morris, who remember is the current two-time defending Premier championship winning coach, where he feels players staying to live in Whanganui and play for a Colts team for a season or two can only help the local club game in the long run.
Malcolm is an astute coach and he knows how to develop a winning Whanganui team in a Manawatu competition, as evidenced by his success with the Wanganui High School 1st XV.
Imagine then, even if only a third of his players decide to stay and play in the Senior and Premier ranks after their Metro career, how much better off the local game could be if this squad becomes a permanent fixture?
That would be 10-12 confident and conditioned young men, aged 22-23, flowing into the adult ranks every season, who might have otherwise been lost to the game.
I don't think there would be any coach complaining if he got his hands on a few of them.