Junior rugby shake-up — no 15-a-side games until high school

A major shake-up of the game proposed by New Zealand Rugby will prevent children playing 15-a-side rugby until their first year of secondary school — a move which has received pushback from some club representatives.

1News can reveal that in a proposal yet to be signed off by NZ Rugby’s board, which will meet later this month, children in their final year of intermediate school (year 8) will play 13-a-side rugby on a slightly narrower (by 10 metres, 5m each side) adult-sized field.

It is proposed that there will be five forwards and eight backs, with the two flankers dropping out.

Under the changes, which have been announced to clubs and have not been received positively in all quarters, year 7-aged children will play 10-a-side rugby on half an adult-sized field.

Previously, year 7 and year 8 kids played 15-a-side rugby on a full field.

Children younger than this will continue to play 10-a-side. Those in their first two years of rugby, aged five and six, will continue to play Rippa, a game which has transformed playing numbers in New Zealand, especially among girls.

The proposed changes have been designed by NZ Rugby’s junior and youth participation manager Bill Wigglesworth and refined with help from extensive research from the English RFU.

There have also been discussions with American ice hockey representatives, who stressed the need for designing rules, or, in the case of rugby, laws, specifically for the level of the participants, rather than maintain a one-size-fits-all approach.

It is hoped the junior rugby changes, expected to come in next year, will encourage more kids to get their hands on the ball which can improve enjoyment and confidence. It is also hoped a more layered approach to the progression of players will help with their development.

NZ Rugby is also stressing the requirement for coaches and parents not to pigeonhole players into positions too early.

Another proposal, as NZ Rugby seeks to recruit and retain players, and most specifically boys, will scrap breakdowns in games for those children in their first year of tackle rugby (seven- and eight-year-olds).

In a change designed to focus children’s progression towards tackling properly, players will be taught to place the ball when tackled, with the halfback directed to immediately pass the ball.

Youth and junior coaches around the country were informed of the proposed changes last week.

One coach who attended one of the meetings in the Harbour province said the reaction to the changes was one of “scepticism”.

“The perception was ‘are we just rugby league now?’, he said. “There wasn’t a lot of positivity. Our group wasn’t happy.”

NZ Rugby told 1News the changes were not necessarily in response to a fall in playing numbers.

In fact, numbers have stabilised following the Covid-19 years of 2020-22.

In 2023, there were 78,920 participants in junior rugby in New Zealand. Last year there were 83,092.

However, a large uptake of girls to the sport – up to a 25% increase in some major unions – has helped boost numbers significantly.

The coach who spoke to 1News said he could understand the rationale behind the proposed changes even if some other club representatives apparently struggled to.

“If that’s their attitude then they aren’t going to relay it very positively to their community,” he said.

The coach said the over-competitive nature of boys’ rugby leading into secondary school age (and beyond) was precisely why changes were required.

He said soon after the announcement of the 13-a-side change, some within the meeting immediately discussed ways of getting an advantage from it.

NZ Rugby community rugby manager Steve Lancaster told 1News that he and his organisation expected pushback.

He said he was aware of the league references as far as the 13-a-side change was concerned, “but frankly that is a very simplistic comparison because otherwise the game is very much rugby".

“We are confident that the supporting information and education will address this. However, there will be some that will not be convinced.”

Lancaster added: “Rugby is a late developers’ sport. It’s not tennis or any of those sports where you have get your ‘10,000 hours’ in at an early age or you’ll never make it.

“We know that you don’t need to specialise until you’re under-16. Under-16 is the first grade where we recommend that players should be specialising in a position.

“The best thing for a player's development is to experience as many positions as possible and develop as many skills as possible while they’re in those junior grades.

“If you look at the All Blacks and Black Ferns and our sevens teams, for a long time the thing that set them apart was their ability to play – to play unstructured rugby, to exploit opportunities. Counter-attack has been a really big part of our game.

“There’s a lot of science behind when we do introduce the structured element and the position-specific element.

“We’re not just making this up. There’s a lot of rigour behind it and a lot of evidence that says it’s the right thing to do, including from our high-performance department who are right behind it.”

When asked whether having two fewer players on a narrower field would make much of a difference, Lancaster said: “The data says it does. We know a lot of parents have good intentions and will say they played a full field and full 15-a-side version of the game when they were 10 and it didn’t harm them so why can’t their kids do it.

“We know there are a lot of parents, like all of us do, have a lot of ambition and aspiration for their kids and believe they need to specialise early.”

NZ Rugby is therefore preparing for robust feedback.

“We’ve been putting the participant at the centre of everything we do for five or six years now,” Lancaster said. “We started these changes in 2020 and have been taking a gradual approach – all based on keeping the game smaller sided for longer so the kids have maximum involvement and enjoyment in the game.

“We’re not stopping this here, either. We’ll continue to evolve the shape of the game at the junior level. It’s all about giving the kids a reason to come back next year.”

Lancaster said he understood that some critics may accuse NZ Rugby of making changes for the sake of it but stressed it was important to follow the science and occasionally experiment.

“We started this new approach to junior participation in 2019, which was the first time in many years that we had an uplift in teenage boys. In 2020 Covid-19 hit and blew everything apart for three years.

“Last year we again had an increase in teenage boys so we feel we’re on the right track.”