Stags coach calls for serious look at Southland’s high-performance programme

Stags coach Dale MacLeod says Southland rugby’s high performance programme needs serious attention conceding there isn’t enough playing depth for it to ditch the NPC’s battlers tag.

Southland has a zero win-seven loss record in the 2022 NPC and is limping through to its third game in eight days when it takes on Bay of Plenty in Tauranga on Sunday.

MacLeod said they have just 25 fit players in the squad, and he has concerns what further injuries against Bay of Plenty might mean for its final two games of the season in Invercargill.

“People will say, ‘grab club boys’, but what club players are left? They haven’t played for six weeks, am I setting them up to fail by throwing them up against two good and big physical sides? Are we just going to get more injuries and concussions?”

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Barring maybe outside back Kieran Lee, MacLeod said they probably don’t have any other players to go to.

The players that have remained on the field – most notably captain Josh Bekhuis, tight-head prop Morgan Mitchell, and first five-eighth Marty Banks – have had to carry a big workload.

“They just want to keep lining up, but it’s taking its toll.”

MacLeod said the harsh reality was the current financial investment into the high-performance programme will need a serious debrief at the end of the season if they want to build the required depth, and put out a squad that can have more success at NPC level.

MacLeod can not speak highly enough of the players work ethic and attitude but admitted the string of losses was taking its toll mentally.

He believed they were five or six more Super quality players away from having the depth and firepower required to be more of a threat in the competition.

That’s probably another $200,000 or so investment.

“We’ve got to have a really good look at the end of the season at what we do and make some decisions and get real about it.

“It can’t be a one-off, it has to be a sustainable programme and look at what the next five years looks like.”

“The public has been fantastic, and they can see the boys are trying. But the bottom line is the team has to be winning games, the boys are so sick of this battler tag, we’ve got to give them the tools.”

He said other bigger spending unions were now stockpiling players, so they can rotate players through the condensed season to keep them fresh.

Those Super Rugby players were comfortable with that because they weren’t being asked to play 10 straight games before heading into another tough Super campaign, MacLeod added.

“We need to be real. I’m not saying we have to go buy 15 Super players and win everything, but we’ve got to be able to bring a bench on.”

“We either invest or nothing changes. We need to be ahead of the game, we need to be proactive.”

He said to retain the best young Southland players the Stags also would need some future success at NPC level.

“We’ve got a few young boys coming through, but they need to be coming into winning rugby not just going, ‘here we go, it’s a grind again’.”

“The problem is if we don’t invest someone will say; ‘no, I’ve got a Waikato or Northland come calling’ and we’ll lose our best players again. Then we’re in scramble mode rather than being proactive.”

On top of playing resources there were other areas where he felt more investment could produce a boost, including technology.