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'I hope the WRU wake up and start to invest in the university pathway'

By Online Editors
Alex Dombrandt was one of the finds of the 2018/19 season. (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Exeter-bound coach Louie Tonkin fears Wales are losing talent to England due to the WRU not realising the potential of the university system to develop players.  

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Currently running Bahrain before his planned switch to become Exeter’s senior academy coach, Tonkin highlights the impact Alex Dombrandt has made in the Gallagher Premiership with Harlequins as an example of the ready-made players the Welsh are potentially losing out on. 

Dombrandt attended university in Wales for three years and represented the Welsh under-20s before joining Harlequins last summer. That move resulted in him being named in the Premiership’s Dream Team of the Year and impressing for England in their end-of-season win over the Barbarians at Twickenham. 

“They’re like academies now,” claimed Tonkin about the university pathway in an interview on talkingrugbyunion.co.uk. “They have an extra 10 or 12 academies in the UK that are churning out professional players.

“Look at some of the guys that are coming out of Cardiff Met, guys like Alex Dombrandt, who are coming out of university physically ready to play professional rugby,” continued the coach who cut his teeth in his native Wales and was the head of rugby at Cardiff University prior to his move to the Middle East.

With Swansea University set to follow Cardiff’s lead and join the BUCS league next season, Tonkin wants the WRU to recognise the universities as a way to develop players for senior professional rugby which hasn’t been the case. 

“It was made very clear to us that while BUCS was a big part of the English rugby pathway, it wasn’t part of the Welsh Rugby Union’s pathway. I hope for the three big universities in that league, the WRU will wake up and start to invest in them a little bit because they are on an unfair playing field, unfortunately.”

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Fresh from winning his first West Asia Premiership title after leaving the UK in 2016, the 36-year-old Tonkin said the opportunity to now work with Exeter was too good to turn down.

“I have respected what they have done from the very beginning. When they got promoted from the Championship years ago, the way that they did that, kept their squad together and recruited really well.

“I just respect their values. From the outside looking in, it all looked very impressive and when I went there for my interview, I was blown away by the professionalism of it all.”

WATCH: Part one of The Academy, the six-part RugbyPass documentary series on how Leicester Tigers develop their players

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J
Jon 9 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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