Modello neozelandese.

[Gioann_Bagoss]

BOP e le nuove frontiere autarchiche.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/prov ... team-ahead

Bay of Plenty full steam ahead
Sunday Star Times

Bay of Plenty rugby has come from the brink of bankruptcy to be the only unbeaten team left in this year's NPC. Greg Ford visited the union to find out why.

No disrespect to the Orewa Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, but a camping ground is the last place you would expect to find a team of professional athletes before playing in the Air New Zealand Cup. But a camping ground is exactly where the Bay of Plenty Steamers will stay before taking on North Harbour in the cup later this year, three and more to a cabin, eating meals cooked by their own hands, with food bought at the local supermarket.

It's where they stayed last year.

And last year, its where they stayed when, at midnight, the team bus rolled up outside a Top 10 establishment in, of all places, Kaikoura, as the team made their way to Blenheim to take on Tasman. The team had travelled by plane to Christchurch and was making its way to Lansdowne Park. The journey took 30 hours.

"And the next night," explains Steamers' coach Sean Horan, "after playing really well, I might add, we stayed in the Criterion Hotel [in Blenheim], which is a one-star . . . if those walls could talk."

Last year's stopover in Northland was no different.

"We stayed in a two-star motel and the players were given microwave meals for their dinners," he says with a laugh. "Some of them managed to find a buffet in town so they could get a decent feed."

But things started to unravel in Napier.

"We got a really good deal to stay in a four-star place along the waterfront. We were in the best hotel, had the best food and produced our worst performance. At the end of year, when the coaches reviewed the season, we said 'mate, we are not going back to those four-star joints again'."

And they haven't.

This year the Steamers are, as the saying goes, keeping things real.

There are no fancy treats after games, just a few beers, like it used to be in the good old days.

When the team was given its kit bag at the start of the season, it contained the bare essentials - a couple of pairs of training shorts and a jersey.

If you rip it, you mend, which is, out of necessity, now the Bay way - part of its no frills approach to professional rugby.

Fifteen months ago the union went perilously close to going broke.

A prominent partner in a local accountancy firm was brought in as interim chief executive to sort things out. Fifteen months on, Jeremy Curragh is still in the job.

"We had about six to eight weeks going the way we were before it was all over," he says. "We were burning cash that quick.

"We had to make some serious and major changes quickly."

Redundancies were made and costs culled.

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"It was a bit like putting the union on a diet - we were obese," says Curragh.

And some lessons from the not too distant past were heeded.

"2004 [when they held the Ranfurly Shield] was a great financial year for the union, which spent fair bit of money because it had it.

"But it didn't react quickly enough when it reduced."

A $800,000 loss in 2007 was quickly turned into a $200,000 profit in 2008.

But the dramas didn't end there.

The Steamers performed abysmally in 2007, finishing second to last in the NPC. Last year, they turned it around - finishing fourth in the round-robin.

But then came the well-documented coaching crisis this year.

Just days before the competition kicked off, Greg Smith fell out with his team.

Horan, the team's manager, responsible for booking all the cut-price accommodation, replaced Smith, and has continued with his egalitarian team philosophy.

"I am known as the grim reaper," he says. "But that's the bottom line for this team. We have no money.

"That hasn't changed us as people, and the boys are not materialistic."

The Horan name is famous in Wellington club rugby circles.

His father is a coaching legend at Marist St Pats. Horan, who has the club's emblem tattooed on his right shoulder, was a club institution for MSP in the late 1990s under current Hawke's Bay coach, Peter Russell. A feisty hooker, he played with a die-for-the- cause commitment that he's instilled in teams he coaches. They also happen to play attractive, uncomplicated, fantastic-to-watch rugby.

As spring arrives the Bay is blossoming, and so is rugby in the region.

Doors are re-opening.

On Thursday the coaches and commercial team visited the New Zealand Warriors league club on a fact-finding mission.

And everybody's second favourite team is, if their training run at Bay Park Stadium at Mt Maunganui on Friday is anything to go by, excited about its success.

Star first five-eighths Mike Delany says: "Things could have gone awry for us but the team is like a family. Our philosophy is to have a bit of fun, because that's what it's all about."

Delany's trusty boot (from one of the heaviest kicking tees around) has been instrumental to his team's success.

But Horan reckons "that blood on the jersey" mentality of Bay rugby is, if we're looking for a secret ingredient, probably the key to this year's success.

"The boys are willing to spill blood for the jersey. You can't ask for more."

[Gioann_Bagoss]

There are no fancy treats after games, just a few beers, like it used to be in the good old days.
When the team was given its kit bag at the start of the season, it contained the bare essentials - a couple of pairs of training shorts and a jersey.

Deogratia.
Si ritorna con i piedi sulla terra.
Tempi duri per i calendar-boys...

[Pukana]

There are no fancy treats after games, just a few beers, like it used to be in the good old days.
When the team was given its kit bag at the start of the season, it contained the bare essentials - a couple of pairs of training shorts and a jersey.

Deogratia.
Si ritorna con i piedi sulla terra.
Tempi duri per i calendar-boys...

e i calendar boys are?????????????????? credevo quelli erano a Parigi.

[Gioann_Bagoss]

e i calendar boys are?????????????????? credevo quelli erano a Parigi.

...appunto...

Ammazza, non si può fare gnanca un po' di ironia, permalosa...

[luqa]

In media stat virtus.

Se è/era eccessivo il 4 stelle , il party, le f..ecc.

può essere lo stesso eccessivo il motel, il micro-onde, le p.. ecc.

[nino22]

Riassunto please?

[Pukana]

le provincie con squadre nell'ANZC non hanno una lira quindi invece di andare a pagare per 30 persone in hotel a 4 or 5 stelle se ne stanno in motel/lodge a $30 (circa 15 Euro) per notte per persona.

non pagano per cibo ma garantiscono un pasto gia preparato da riscaldare al micro-onde.

la sola osservazione che farei: nell'articolo si parla di giocatori che vanno in cerca di buffet a a sgravo. dico ma pagare $10 per un pasto in un risto indiano je fa schifo??????? se la union e' in difficolta' i giocatori son pure loro pezzenti dal momento che cmq si beccano il salario.

Giovedi' scorso dopo aver lavorato con NHRU, parlavo con alcuni giocatori del Southland e anche loro alloggiavano in un motel a 3 stelle invece del solito albergo a 5 in Takapuna.

Recessione e paura del divisions cut off announcement for 2010.

[nino22]

Forse si sta passando da un eccesso all'altro però sto tornare con i piedi per terra non è male, magari succedesse cosi anche in Francia dove ultimamente stanno straspendendo!