Heartland Championship - news

[Stargazer]

South Canterbury have named their "Ranfurly Shield Challenge Wider Training Squad":

[Higgins]

Interesting to see a Nick Croswell listed amongst the loose forwards. Can it possibly be the former Hurricane, Highlander and Chief from the early to mid 2010s?

[Bovidae]

His brother is listed too.

[Higgins]

@Bovidae Also Hone Haerewa who had been the Captain for a couple of years is also back in the squad after his sojourn up in North Harbour.

[Higgins]

@Bovidae said in Heartland Championship - news:

His brother is listed too.

I see that and he too played a couple of times for the Chiefs whilst at Taranaki. Think he also laced up the boots for the Coast for a season about four or five years back as well.

[mikey07]

@Higgins See Faifili Levave is back I played against him two weeks ago he still runs pretty hard. He was making a few breaks against us, my claim to fame was I ran him down before the tryline. An absolutely lovely bloke off the field though.

[mikedogz]

[Stargazer]

The Heartland Championship starts this Saturday, 12 August 2023.

I'll post all squads below (except the NP East Coast and Thames Valley squads that have already been posted):

[Stargazer]

North Otago:

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[Stargazer]

[Stargazer]

Of Buller and West Coast, I've only seen wider training squads, so I assume/hope they'll post their finals quads for 2023.

[SouthernMann]

@Stargazer said in Heartland Championship - news:

North Otago:

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Two missing players for North Otago are Aleki Morris and Vili Koroi

[Stargazer]

@SouthernMann Yeah, North Otago squad was named on 17 July. There may have been some changes to some other squads as well. For example, Joe Royal was named in the NPEC squad, but has since then been included in the Auckland squad.

[booboo]

[Daffy Jaffy]

[mikedogz]

West Coasts first ever trophy in any Heartland or Division 3 competition.

[Bovidae]

I won't start a new thread but Thames Valley and King Country will be playing in the curtain-raiser for the Chiefs-Hurricanes game in May.

https://www.chiefs.co.nz/news-item/chiefs-country-teams-to-play-curtain-raiser-at-fmg-stadium-waikato

[Bovidae]

Highlighting the financial problems Heartland provinces have.

The South Canterbury Rugby Union has withdrawn from its Ranfurly Shield challenge against Hawke’s Bay in Napier in July citing financial constraints. South Canterbury Rugby chief executive Tim Hyde-Smith said the decision was one which had not been taken lightly, but having exhausted all funding options he confirmed the union was well short of raising enough to cover the cost of taking the team to Napier.
A statement released by the union on Tuesday afternoon said the SCRU had advised Hawke’s Bay Rugby and NZ Rugby of the decision.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/350284969/south-canterbury-withdraws-ranfurly-shield-challenge-citing-financial-constraints

[Dan54]

@Bovidae yep mate, but I can see why they pulled plug, they got almost no chance of winning shield, and have had a couple of challenges already.
Perhaps not best practice to keep spending money on beating head against wall?

[Smudge]

Also for South Canterbury, it's two expensive domestic regional flights each way, or ... a 2hr bus trip to Chch each way and a flight to Napier, orrrrr a flight to Wellington and a 4.5hr (or thereabouts) bus trip each way, so the quickest way (Timaru-Wellington-Napier) is probably $500 each way = $1000. Throw in accommodation and expenses and it's probably $1300 per person. So maybe $40k once you throw in support staff?