RFU's annual youth festival delights and frustrates in equal measure
Every year, the best and the brightest U16 players in England are brought together at Wellington College for a week-long festival of rugby, coaching and education.
All 14 regional academies under the Premiership Rugby Limited umbrella convene on leafy Berkshire to attend the RFU-run event, in order to both develop the players at their disposal, as well as helping set a number of the youngsters on paths to becoming professional rugby players in two- or three-years’ time.
There are two game days where the academies all play off against one another, but beyond that, and perhaps more importantly, the Wellington Festival provides education on nutrition, psychology and different coaching techniques, all the whilst promoting integration and socialising between the different squads.
As preparation for the final two years of their school rugby careers go, in which many of the attendees will be targeting professional contracts, it is an extremely beneficial and enjoyable experience.
Of course, not everyone who attends the Festival will go on to feature for their affiliated academy at U18 level. There is a drop-out rate, but the Festival at least provides them with a memorable farewell with their teammates and potentially paves the way for them to link up with another team, perhaps at a slightly lower level, and play their way back up into that elite pathway further down the road.
The 2019 edition of the Festival got underway on Saturday, before the first of its two game days on Sunday. There was no lack of talent on show and to the casual observer, it would look as though the future of English rugby is particularly bright.
The range of skills and ability on show is truly exciting. One openside played with a line-speed and proclivity over the ball that should have him starring in the U18s next season and there was a multitude of decision-making and ambitious scrum-halves and fly-halves. Back rowers were showing adept kicking skills and there was a glut of tightheads who, whilst obviously fairly unpolished at this point, look as if they have won the genetic lottery. Second rows offloading and stepping in at first receiver, centres that looked like back rowers on fast-forward and full-backs with great variety in their games.
You can go from team to team and pick out multiple players that, with the right physical and technical development over the next two years, should be capable of picking up professional contracts with their Gallagher Premiership clubs. Year on year, the quality seems to get higher at the Festival and the development of players from this level to the U18s is notable and reflects well on both their schools and the academy coaching staffs.
With that, however, comes the negative of the Festival and it’s actually nothing to do with the week-long event.
Continue reading below…
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Premiership clubs, for a number of seasons now, have been locked in an arms race with their financially better off rivals from France. With the marquee spots in a Premiership roster, English clubs are able to compete for individual players with sides from the Top 14, but with their lower salary cap, they are less able to deal with the rising salary expectations that those marquee spots bring throughout the entire team.
For the second year in a row, all Premiership clubs apart from Exeter Chiefs made a financial loss. For some clubs, those losses can be underwritten or are part of an ongoing process towards sustainability, but for others it signals worrying times. Yet, they continue to recruit heavily from abroad, paying the salary premiums that signing, rather than developing talent, brings with it.
The recruitment is also often targeted at established Tier 1 players who do not come cheaply, having already made their names in Super Rugby or the Guinness PRO14. They tend to eschew the approach that the Scottish clubs have shown in targeting unheralded Fijian and South African players with plenty of promise, or the Irish approach of just sprinkling an array of foreign talent around the core of their squads that have been developed at home.
The financial situation that this approach has imposed on the clubs is not likely to get better anytime soon, either, with CVC’s 27% stake in the Premiership almost certainly going to eat up any short-term increases in revenue. The wisdom of the deal won’t be decided until much further down the road, when we will see if CVC are able to increase the commercial appeal of the competition beyond the cut that they will now take, and the clubs become better off as a result.
With all of this in mind, it brings us back to the negative side of the Wellington Festival and that’s the amount of talent that is going to go wasted from this group of young athletes.
English rugby is sitting on a player pool of talent, thanks to the school system, academy staffs and RFU pathways, that is arguably unrivalled in world rugby. In terms of quantity, it far exceeds that on offer in New Zealand, and the quality is not far off, either. The closing of that gap with New Zealand over the last 10 years has been impressive and from a skill level perspective, the gap only looks like it will further diminish.
If you take the Kiwi Super Rugby franchises, they are capable of losing handfuls of players every year to lucrative contracts in Europe and Japan, yet they are able to restock and go again the next season, barely missing a step as they do. It’s that jump from juniors to seniors where New Zealand steals a march on England, particularly in terms of opportunities for players just outside the elite prospects.
Why, therefore, is there not more of a premium put on developing your own talent in England?
It should be pointed out that this isn’t a weakness of English rugby. A number of the Premiership clubs are built around cores of homegrown players that have come through from their own junior academy, whilst the quotas of English-qualified players required by the RFU are usually all met.
There is a bountiful crop of players pushing for international selection year after year, too, but that should not be surprising or necessarily even a reason to celebrate. Given the resources and player pool England has as a country, being able to develop enough players to push for and compete for one national team is the absolute bare minimum. It should also be able to sustain 12 professional teams.
No one is saying don’t recruit players from abroad, but when you’re losing money year after year, paying out big to bring in a ‘name’ who might depart after a couple of seasons and then letting talented players walk at 18, you’ve got to question the logic of it.
Each individual club operates in their own way and there is no blanket generalisation you can adhere to them all, just as each individual player coming out of a junior academy at 18 is a unique situation, but this recruit-heavy approach is financially unsustainable, not delivering competitive sides in European competition and further driving rising salary expectations.
The threat of relegation will always be used as the counter argument to this. The clubs will say how can we take the risk on of filling our squads with younger players who have come through the academy system, when that lack of experience or ability of a 28-year-old from Super Rugby, could cost us our place in the Premiership?
It’s a fair comment and probably something which could only be changed by the Premiership itself, by insisting on regulations that require each squad to carry a certain percentage of players that have come through the academy pathway. This will create the opportunities they need, because outside of the improving BUCS Super Rugby competition and the even more financially unsustainable Greene King IPA Championship, those opportunities are sorely lacking.
A number of clubs this year have let players in the £50k to £120k bracket leave if they aren’t first XV regulars in order to contract the higher earners in their squads, and there needs to be some sort of action to at least arrest the rise in wages. The French flexing their financial muscles started it and the marquee spots and BT Sport broadcast deal have since exacerbated it, but if they rise much more, no one apart from the French are going to be able to live with it.
You would expect, with these increases in salary expectation at the highest level that also trickle down to squad players, that senior academy contracts would be on the up around the Premiership, with clubs eyeing those youngsters as affordable depth options, but early indications are that the numbers aren’t increasing in line with that. There will be several smaller intakes this season when the clubs announce them in the next few weeks or months.
And again, that brings us back to the Wellington Festival.
Player development has seemingly never been better in this country and for all of the excitement and promise that the Festival offers, you get the same melancholic feeling that, in two years’ time, these players will be facing the same difficulty in winning a professional contract that the current U18s are.
As the recent sanctions around high tackles have attempted to change long-term behaviour in order to provide better outcomes, in which early results are proving promising, it seems sadly as if the positive behavioural change in the pathways is not yet having the correlated effect across the board on off field outcomes among Premiership clubs.
Watch: The Academy – Part One
Comments on RugbyPass
Sorry Morgan you must have been the “go to for a quote” ex player this week. Its rnd 6 and there is plenty of time to cement a starting 15 and finishing 8 so I have no such concerns.
1 Go to commentsGreat read. I wish you had done this article on the ROAR.
2 Go to commentsThe current AB coaching team is basically the Crusaders so it smacks of wanting their familiar leaders around. This is not a good look for the future of the ABs or the younger players in Super working their way up the player ladder. Razor is touted as innovative, forward looking but his early moves look like insecurity and insular, provincial thinking. He is the AB's coach not the Golden Oldies.
10 Go to commentsSimple reason for wanting him back. Robertson wants him as captain. Otherwise he wouldn’t be bothering chasing him. Not enough reason to come back just to mentor.
10 Go to commentsI had not considered this topic like this at all, brilliant read. I had been looking at his record at the Waratahs and thought it odd the Crusaders appointed him, then couple that with all that experience and talent departing and boom. They’ve got some great talent developing though, and in all honesty I don’t think anyone would be over confident taking them on in a playoff match, no matter how poor the first half of their season was. I think they can pull a game out of their ass when it counts.
2 Go to commentsNot a bad list but not Porecki and not Donaldson. Not because they are Tahs, or Ex Tahs, they are just not good enough. Edmed should be ahead. Far more potential. Wilson should be 8 and Valentini 6. Wilson needs to be told by his father and his coach, stop bloody running in to brick wall defence. You’re not playing under the genius Thorn any more. He’s a fantastic angle runner. The young new 8 from the Brumbies looks really good too. The Lonegrans are just too small for international rugby as is Paisami, as is Hamish Stewart at 12. Both great at Super Rugby level. Stewart could have been a great 10 if not for Brad Thorn. Uru should be there and so should Tupou. Tupou just needs good Australian coaching which he hasn’t been getting. I don’t think Schmidt will excite him.
2 Go to commentsIf he wants to come back then he should. He will be a major asset to the younger locks and could easily be played as an impact player off the bench coming on in the last 30. He is fit, strong and capable and has all the experience to make up for any loss in physical prowess. He could also be brought back with a view to coaching within the structures one day. Duane Vermeulen played until he was 37 or 38. He is now a roaming coach within the South African coaching structures. He was valuable in the last world cup and has been a major influence on Jasper Wiese and other young players which has helped and accelerated their development and growth. Whitelock could do the exact same thing for NZ
10 Go to commentsBrett Excellent words… finally someone (other than DC) has noted that Hanigan is very hard and very good at doing what Backrow should do… his performance via the Drua sauna was quite daunting for those on the other side… very high tackle count… carries with good end result… constant threat to make a good 20-25 meters with those long legs… providing his mass effectively to crunching the Drua pack… Finally he is returning to quality form… way to much injury time over the last 2 years… smart-strong-competent in his skills… caught every lineout throw aimed at him and delivered clean pass to whoever was down below… and he worked hard for the whole 80 minutes… Ned has to be in the top 5 for backrow honors… He knows what is required as he has been there before…
20 Go to commentsI think Sam Whitelock should not touch a return with a bargepole. He went out on a high, playing in the RWC Final. He would be coming back into a team that will be weaker than last years, and might even be struggling to win games, especially against the Boks. Stay in France, enjoy another year with Pau, playing alongside his brother.
10 Go to commentsRyan Coxon has been very impressive considering he was signed by WF as injury cover whilst Uru has been a standout for QR, surprised neither of those mentioned
2 Go to commentsIt’s the massive value he brings with regard team culture/values, preparation, etc. Can’t buy that. I’m hoping to see the young locks get their chance in the big games though.
10 Go to commentsAll good, Gregor, except that you neglected to mention Sam Darry amongst that talented pool of locks. In fact, given Hannah’s inexperience and the fact that Holland won’t be eligible until next year, Lord and Darry might be the frontrunners this year, to join Barrett, Tuipoluto, Va’ii and possibly Whitelock. In fact there might be room for all of them if Barrett played 6 (like Ollie Chessum).
10 Go to commentsHis value is stabilizing the ship 20 - 40 minutes out from the final whistle plus his valuable experience to the underlings coming through.
10 Go to commentsWhat is criminal is she acts like it's no problem her actions have have cause the Italian player to lose her playing career, lose salary, if she did this in day to day life she would be in jail, she is a complete thug!!!
3 Go to commentsCorrect me if i’m wrong but the sadas have to win all games running into the finals yeh nah?
1 Go to commentsDon’t like Diamond but the maul is a joke, the sight of a choke tackle creating a maul then players in offside positions flopping on it killing the ball but then getting the put in? Banal.
3 Go to commentsHopefully Tabai Matson returns to Crusaders as head coach next season.
1 Go to commentsstorm in a teacup really. Penalty only so play on as the try was scored. Now the real question is: why was Maitland allowed to pass the ball off the floor? That is illegal but refs never pick it up.
1 Go to commentsWhen Beauden Barrett signed his contract before the 2023 RWC to play in Japan in 2024, it was NOT part of a sabbatical agreed to with NZRU prior to his signing, as was Ardie Savea and Sam Cane. Barrett changed his mind after the fact and negotiated his return to NZ Rugby and he was given permission to be eligible for All Black selection straight away once he signed a new contract to return to the Blues in 2025. Therefore, why would anyone argue against Whitelock returning to the All Blacks straight away after his season is France is finished if he signs a new contract with NZRU which includes a Super Rugby contract in 2025? If Barrett can, Whitelock should be allowed too.
10 Go to commentsThe All Blacks will select 5 locks this season. Scott Robertson will most likely want to select 2 veteran locks who can start right away in 2024 and 3 young promising locks who he would like to be pushing hard for selection in the starting XV in two years time- 2026. Scott Barrett is a world class lock. Who would you rather start beside him this season against England, South Africa, Ireland, and France- Sam Whitelock or Patrick Tuipulotu? I would choose Whitelock over Tuipulotu all day, every day.
10 Go to comments