Should they have even been allowed to play in that final?
This is a first hand account by a parent who attended Academy Week and witnessed the game between SWD and WP on match day 2, which SWD scraped home by 22-19 but appeared to break the quota rules in doing so:
SWD only fielded 6 PDI players against WP on Tuesday for the full duration of the match, thus breaking the rules of the Academy week.The rules of the tournament clearly states that you have to have 8 players of colour on the field at all times.Whether we agree with this rule or not is beside the point here, the fact is that the rule was clearly and deliberately broken by SWD.They were penalised by the tournament organizers by having 4 first choice players(nrs 2,6,7,8) playing off the bench in the final and only allowed 15 minutes game time.In the final SWD again broke the rules by fielding only 7 PDI players.When the EP coaching staff caught up on this they took a PDI player off and replaced him with a 1st choice player.It sounds like the reserve hooker of SWD was injured , so they played their second choice hooker which is understandableIf they had stuck to the rules of the tournament, they should have replaced another non-PDI player in the final to bring the numbers to 8/7.
SWD went on to record a comprehensive 32-7 victory against EP in that final.
Simple stick to the rules
To all of the above,……….Academy week is something of the past, WE WON, by fault or default or sheer talent in this case ( I know ) , there was plenty of injuries,….so we did the right thing and played the reserves,…as I said before you must try harder with the development of your PDI players.
They should not have been allowed to play in the final. Their opposition should be awarded a win by default. The SWD administrators/management should receive a red card, and be barred from anticipating in any form of rugby for a year.
They should not have played in the final. If you break the rules you must pay the penalty. Hollow victory for them!
I take back all my previous comments with regards to our province not being able to field enough quality PDI players.
I guess our mistake is that we are not that good at breaking the rules !
As Predator said in another blog, the provinces that are complaining should just try harder.
Maybe we should do that in future. Try harder to get more 1st choice players on the field !
Seems to work for SWD, where they don’t even need it.