Wallabies and Randwick great Simon Poidevin has rebuked the NSW Rugby Union for yesterday approving a player points system it believes will make the club championship a more even competition next year.
Poidevin wrote a stinging email to NSWRU chief executive Jim L'Estrange criticising the change, which will restrict the ability of bigger clubs to recruit players. In it he said:
"This is up there with the most despicable and gutless decisions made by the NSWRU Board in the history of the game in the State of NSW. Since when does any business or sport gravitate to the lowest common denominator to take that business or sport forward."
Speaking with the Herald later, Poidevin, a former international who played Sydney club rugby for 15 years, warned the NSWRU to expect some stiff opposition.
"If they think it has been rubber-stamped, the fight has just begun," he said. "Their total lack of judgment on the [defunct] ARC and the huge losses that sprayed out of that monstrosity … they still make the same decisions.
"One of the great ironies is that the good clubs that were paying players big amounts of money recklessly are the clubs that want this new system because they have sent themselves broke making stupid decisions."
Meanwhile, the NSWRU board also agreed yesterday that the Tooheys New Shute Shield would remain as a 12-team competition made up of the same sides as this season and continue as a 22-round home-and-away series.
However, in a move Poidevin also criticised, the premiership clubs will no longer be required to field four grade teams and three Colts sides for the club championship, but only three grade sides and two Colts teams.
Colts sides will also now play only an 18-round season, as against the 22 rounds they played this year. A separate third- and fourth-grade competition will still be held with no championship points on offer.
"You are still diluting your product," Poidevin said. "It's about time the NSWRU worked out that club rugby is a huge asset rather than being something which they throw around like a rag doll. The sooner the Australian Rugby Union takes control of club rugby in this country, the sooner we will have sensible decisions for the future of the game being made."
The premiership player points system will mean all players for first- and second-grade teams are graded individually, taking into account the competitions in which they have played.
However, players who have played for their club for a number of years, or games, or have ancestry with a particular club, can have their points discounted so they can fit under a points cap, which is yet to be determined.
"Clubs will know that on the track at any one time you are only allowed so many points," L'Estrange said. "The [club] general managers have been determining those points over the last few weeks.
"What they are trying to do is make sure there is a sustainable competition which is week-in, week-out a good competition through the grades."
NSW board member and clubs representative Chris Birch said the plan would take several years to make an impact. "The players will all be able to go on the field," he said. "But it might stop clubs from recruiting as strong as they have in the past and try and boost up a particular area."
