Shallower pool, bigger splash

OPINION: Long-time Southland fans are buzzing, writes Nathan Burdon in this week's Straight Up.

A new generation of supporters has been created.

Anyone who has been following Southland rugby for any length of time finds themselves having to pinch themselves at the prospect of the Stags tasting the rarefied air of the top of the national provincial championships.

Not only are they up there, on Friday night they won a game that teams in previous years would have found a way of turning into a gallant loss.

So, how did all this happen?

Let's start with the negative aspects.

The standard of the NPC has undoubtedly dropped since the creation of the Air New Zealand Cup. New Zealand's talent pool has become shallower with the addition of four new teams, spreading out the ranks of professional and semi-professional rugby players in this country.

At the same time All Blacks, and even Super 14 players, have played an increasingly small role in the NPC, again to the detriment of the skill and experience levels of all the teams involved. And we've also seen a continuing flood of players heading overseas to big-money contracts in the UK, France and Japan.

Southland has largely managed to buck these trends.

Jimmy Cowan is the only Southland player who has missed a significant number of games because of All Black duties.

There have been only a handful of frontline players who have headed overseas and they have usually gone with the blessing of Rugby Southland.

Guys like Kane Thompson, Clarke Dermody, Hale T-Pole and Hoani Macdonald spring to mind.

There hasn't been the sort of exodus we have seen at big unions like Auckland, which seems to have a new squad every year.

So the Stags have been able to field a largely stable roster at a time when other unions have faced mass exoduses.

The standard of their play has suffered, which has been another boost for the Stags.

Stags coaches Simon Culhane and David Henderson have provided a period of stability following a pattern of abrupt departures by the likes of Bob Telfer, Leicester Rutledge and Phil Young.

They have created an atmosphere players want to be a part of. Players who struggled to make it in Dunedin have become successes in Invercargill, and a lot of that goes down to the front office at Rugby Park.

Finally, we have been lucky to retain our best young talent.

Mils Muliaina and Corey Flynn aside, it's difficult to think of a really talented player of the past decade or more who has headed north for better opportunities.

In the meantime, we've had and kept Dermody, Paul Miller, Macdonald, Cowan, and a new breed including Jamie Mackintosh, John Hardie and Robbie Robinson.

Long-term success is about ensuring you keep doing the things that have made you successful in the past.

We can enjoy it all for now, and the big crowd that turned out on Friday night certainly did, but this all comes with a warning.

We don't have to look too far only as far as Otago to see what can happen when a once-proud union rests on its laurels.

» Nathan Burdon has been the Southland Times sports editor since 2003 and has won numerous journalism awards, including provincial sports writer of the year.

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