The New Zealand Rugby Union's general manager of community rugby, Brent Anderson, explains why officials try to level the playing field. Read his thoughts in the New Zealand Herald.
"Among the things we tell our coaches is that they should ensure every child gets at least half a game. We also tell them that where a score blowout looks likely (such as more than 35 points), the coaches must get together at halftime to look at ways to create a more even contest.
"Some suggestions on how they can do this are changing players around, swapping forwards and backs, replacing or swapping a player who might be dominating the game, doing some in-game coaching or setting some challenges for one or other of the teams and - for the very brave - swapping the coaches.
"The aim is to try to ensure the rugby experience is fun for both teams because it's no big leap to work out that if a team is getting beaten by big scores every week, the children in that team will start to lose interest in the game, as will the players in a team that wins big week-in, week-out.
"Capping scores is not something the NZRU has imposed or requires. It was an initiative from the Auckland junior rugby committee, which was finding that some coaches in the under-12 and under-13 club competitions were not endeavouring to manage score blowouts at halftime, therefore ignoring the guidelines of the Small Blacks development model."
RSS feed
