South Island rugby league champions the Aoraki Eels are off to Auckland this weekend in the hope of making it to the big league.
The South Canterbury-based Eels, with a semifinal bye, had to sit back and watch the Bay of Plenty Lakers take onthe Wellington Orcas last weekend to learn their opponent for Saturday’s NationalChampionship final.
Bay of Plenty ended up winning that match, 30-24.
The reward for a win is considerable as the winning team will be promoted to the National Premiership to take on the likes of Otago, Canterbury, Waikato, Counties and Auckland.
Aoraki Eels coach Nathan Robinson said changes at the club played a big part in this year’s success.
‘‘I’m lucky enough to be the coach this year.
‘‘I wasn’t a part of it last year but we lost four out of four games.
‘‘We had a bit of a turnaround in personnel and we’ve had a really good buyin.
‘‘The boys are good mates on and off the field and that’s given us the results,’’ Mr Robinson said.
The Eels completed a stellar campaign with wins over Southland, Tasman and the West Coast, culminating in a South Island championship win and a televised final [live on Sky Sport 4] to look forward to.
‘‘It’s a really exciting time for the boys.
‘‘We’re definitely feeling it, nerves-wise.
‘‘A couple of the boys are going to miss out because we have to make sure we have the right players and combinations selected.’’
Mr Robinson said it was the first time in the club’s eight-year history it had progressed to this game.
‘‘It was our goal to make this game and the boys kind of giggled at me about it, but I told them we were here to win and not just make up numbers.’’ ‘‘Now it’s realistic — we’re there.
‘‘As a coach that was the target and now I know the team wants to go past that target, win this game and be promoted next year.’’
The team was made upof 11 players new to rugby league, with only three returning from last year’s side.
‘‘I think they surprised themselves over the last five weeks with how we actually went.
‘‘We now have that unity, that camaraderie. A lot of these boys are built up from the Temuka Rugby Club and they had a good season.
‘‘It took awhile for them to buy in but once they played the structure and patterns, they saw it worked so now they’re confident to play to it, stick to it, and that will be key.’’
Mr Robinson said according to statistics from New Zealand Rugby League (NZRL), the code in the region had grown by 300% — the most for any region in the country.
He said that unfortunately, a big issue was that the region was not equipped to meet that growth.
‘‘If we win this weekend, the NZRL will come down and check our facilities and say no [to promotion] straight away.
‘‘We use Ashbury Park No 3 and the ground is uneven, has no hot water and one changing shed.
‘‘We sometimes use Ashbury 1 [field] in conjunction with Harlequins but Timaru cricket has the lease and they take the posts down.
‘‘Otago play at Forsyth Barr Stadium, Canterbury have their own dedicated stadium and Auckland use the Warriors’ ground. They all have state-of-the-art facilities whereas we are still to get there, but it’s just about figuring out how.’’
Mr Robinson said they were meeting with the council to discuss a more permanent ground in the next couple of weeks.
‘‘We had a 10-year plan and we’ve got to where we wanted to be in eight, we have six senior teams and 18 junior teams, it’s very hard, it falls to three to five volunteers to run it all.
‘‘We are trying to meet halfway, it’s really tricky.’’
The growth of rugby league in the region also saw Aoraki field its first women’s team for the Southern Zone South Island Tournament held in Timaru last month.
‘‘Our girls had never played league.
‘‘We trained for a month and turned up on game day and had a crack.’’
They lost both games they played but had three players named in the South Island tournament team.
‘‘That’s a massive boost for the girls’ game in our region.’’
The junior club competition also kicked off last week. Due to the lack of facilities, teams are playing on both Friday night and Saturday morning in Pleasant Point, with the under-15s having to run a month later in Geraldine.
Mr Robinson said a win by the Eels this weekend could be the catalyst to start working on those issues.
