The NRL needs an extra 100 players. Here’s how we target rugby’s strongholds

With two expansion clubs joining the NRL in the next two years, and talk already turning to a third following soon after, rugby league needs more players.

Ninety to 100 extra players is what that translates to at the top level alone, let alone the juniors and pathways that set a club up for the long term.

Where I think there’s an opportunity to find those players – and it’s only an opportunity – is in South Africa. And an even bigger, far more tangible pathway, is the south island of New Zealand.

Firstly, across the Indian Ocean. South Africa has an incredibly rich rugby union history with four World Cup victories (including the last two) and sport in their DNA. They produce phenomenal athletes, especially big, strong and fast rugby players who thrive on the physical side of the game.

Rugby union’s foundations in South Africa present rugby league with a chance to grow as well, especially if our code looks to get involved in their school system using rugby league nines.

Nine-a-side league is a great intro product to the game – it’s fun to play, fast, open footy with a lot of space. But the physicality that makes rugby league what it is (and which I think South Africans thrive on), as well as the defensive fundamentals, are still there.

Sevens rugby league and rugby union have so much emphasis on fitness, speed and endurance, whereas nines offers more of a balance between the codes.

South Africa’s school system plays a massive role in rugby union’s pathways over there, much like the 15-man game here, and I think it’s worth trying to present rugby league to the younger generation.

There’s no harm in seeing if there’s interest, because of course rugby union is never going to be overtaken in South Africa. But with 15 players on the field and less space and time out wide for the fastest, most physically gifted athletes, I’d love to show them our game and what they could do with it.

If you could get schoolboys and girls trying out rugby league, who knows, you might unearth a new pathway. Outside backs, predominantly wingers, are the most obvious, and probably the only converts.

But dreaming big, imagine champion winger Bryan Habana playing left wing outside Cody Walker and Latrell Mitchell. In today’s game, Springboks stars Jesse Kriel and Cheslin Kolbe could be anything playing rugby league.

My other favourite that many people may not know is Danie Gerber – an incredibly gifted, tearaway centre who the world didn’t see enough of because he played during the apartheid era when South Africa were banned from a lot of international sport.

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