ConanTroutman wrote:
Ryan wrote:
djtim3000 wrote:
I'd say its because every country only has a very limited supply of top level sports people - and all of ours play other sports. People with the natural ability, reflexes, vision and freakish athleticism of say Carter, the Smiths, McCullum or Shaun Johnson could have been our international football stars. Instead they (and most other high-level NZ sports people) chose other sports. Mainly because all their top level sporting friends did the same, but it is also that they are better pathways to professionalism.
You can coach the shark out of the next tier of sports people all you like, but they aren't ever going to be as good as the best of the best.
How do you change that?
Maybe the backs, but our attackers (excluding Wood) are too small to play rugby.
Depending on the position, and you're talking top-level rugby. Using the McCullum example, he kept Dan Carter out of rep teams when he was playing rugby as a kid, and he's a few cm taller than Rojas and a few cm shorter than Thomas. Ideally you want those natural athlete kids playing football from as soon as they can walk basically, as they would in most countries but here they're not. They might switch to football as teenagers if they realise they're too small to make it as a rugby player, but by that point they're a decade or so behind where they could be in terms of football experience and skills.
Oh what bullshi7. There are thousands of "footballers" that have never played any other sport but the world game and they still have amounted to nothing. Kids growing up to play rugby because of they want to not because football is a "soft game".
