ADVANCE planning is one of the key ingredients for any sport to achieve success.
For those at Fiji National Rugby League, they have also started planning ahead for the next decade or so in terms of developing their home grown players.
The target is to get success in the sport they love.
With the new season expected to start in April, the rugby league office has launched a program called Kalawa with the aim to help its players get mature enough and ready to step forward for future challenges.
FNRL operations manager Josefa Finau said, this year there would be a number of changes in the competition to help achieve their goals in the kalawa program.
“The most interesting and exciting season will kick off in April,” he said.
“We have been concentrating on the Nines for the past couple of weeks. At the moment we have already started our program towards 2017, 2021 and 2025 Rugby League World Cup.
“We have started with the development work with the secondary schools around the country.
“It is good to start from an early age where the children are exposed to the sport.
“The program is looked after by our development team.
“They had started with the development during the school holidays. These young players will be at their peak when we reach 2021 and 2025 to represent the country.”
Finau said the new system introduced would give the players ample time to get experience when the time comes for international duties.
“The system and the pathway we have created are new which we did not have in the past.
“In the past the maturity age of a player to play certain sport was late 20s and 30s,” he revealed.
“What we are proposing now is when they reach this age, we can ensure that these players are not only matured but also have contracts as well.”
It is always essential for any sporting body to have a strong foundation to survive the strongest cyclones.
FNRL wanted to establish a high performance unit to help players upgrade their game.
“At this stage, having a high performance unit is still on the primary stages.
“We have already met with the Fiji Sports Commission regarding the HPU,” he added.
“When we will have more staff joining us, then only we can activate the HPU gyms.
“The plan is already there as we have started with the elite players.
“The players have the training program with them all around the country and their performances are gauged with their fitness.”
There are pools of players identified by the development officers together with assistant Vodafone Fiji Bati coach Jo Rabele.
“The players were classified as the “elite” players who could force their way into the national squad for the 2017 Rugby League World Cup.
“We have started off with the fitness and we had few sessions with them in the past weeks. We also plan to have a number of sessions to monitor the progress of the players,” he said.
“This is where we will be picking up our future teams from.”
Finau said the FNRL wanted its future players to have their own identity when they reach stardom. They have set up a criteria to help players achieve only the best.
It could be the possible reason for FNRL to decide whether to have a change in the Vodafone Cup format to give everyone equal opportunity to make the Fiji Bati squad.
“We are trying to have a zonal competition this year.
“It is not just players from the club make it to the national team,” explained Finau.
“We are creating a pathway where the players wearing a Fiji Bati jersey and people will see where they have started from.
“It also creates transparency why the player is there and what the players have gone through over the past years.
“Before it was normal for a player to go from a club level to a national team.
“When we reach to certain stage there is a total different ball game together.
“We are making sure the players and management follow in order for them to reach to the Fiji Bati which is everyone’s dream.
“For the Vodafone Cup competition the age group we have distributed to our affiliated clubs that in order to be part of the competition they had to come up with age group competition.”
Everything has been put in order and the balls have started rolling in the right direction but only time will tell what is in store in future.
