Four years ago, Otago Touch was on its knees.
It was struggling financially and high-end talent was dwindling. But it has come a long way, with changes off the field leading to outstanding results on it.
Its latest success? Seven Otago players named in New Zealand under-20 squads for the three-match transtasman test series in Auckland in January. That is in addition to the seven already in under-18 squads, alongside Damian Burden and Dayna Turnbull, who will coach under-18 mixed and under-20 women’s teams respectively.
"That’s an amazing record for us down here and certainly one that will be difficult to beat next year," Otago Touch Association chairman Rodney Johnston said.
"It’s a first. We’ve never had this many players involved in the transtasman."
The outstanding period for the sport started when changes were made behind the scenes four years ago.
"We were struggling because we didn’t have the round of business skills in running an association.
"We had a lot of parents that were awesome coaches — you’ve seen it in lots of sports. But we recognised that what we needed to do was to get our back office in order. We brought in some prominent people on to the board to give us some advice and we employed a couple more.
"The ones that were involved, they were good coaches and awesome people, but they were trying to do too much. So it was about redefining their roles and letting everyone get on with the job."
Making use of community trusts and sponsors helped put into place structures which have enabled the game in the region to flourish. Those included getting into schools to develop skills, alongside increasing the hours of development officer Grant Milne, who Johnston said had had a big impact. Alongside that there were 700-800 volunteers essential to helping the sport in the community.
"We’re finding the real focus in sport at the moment is around getting certain skill bases into schools for junior kids," Johnston said.
"I guess that’s where touch has a really good foundation for the hand-eye co-ordination, catching and passing the ball, big ball skills. That’s what Sport New Zealand and Sport Otago are really focusing on. So that’s kind of why we’ve got so many kids playing our sport now and therefore the elite side of the sport is becoming more of a focus as a pathway to more success."
Milne said there were 8100 players in the region, and another 2000 expected to begin in the term one schools competition. That was up nearly 3000 on the numbers playing five years ago. Within that, high-level performance was flourishing as the region’s teams were regularly proving competitive at national level. Promoting that elite side was a key goal, as the sport looked to quash the perception of it being just a social game.
"Elite representative level is sort of in a golden era [in Otago]," Milne, who coaches the New Zealand under-15 mixed team, said.
"We started off getting one person into a New Zealand team and the flow-on effect has been huge. They’ve all built up over the last five years. So we’ve gone from no [New Zealand coaches] to four.
"The flow-on effect is that it’s not just those New Zealand representatives getting that coaching, but every team that they’re a part of. They’re passing on their knowledge which is making it really good.
"We’ve gone from the poor cousins to big players across the country. Our players and our coaches are sought-after by New Zealand. Five years ago we used to be scared of playing Canterbury and now we just expect that we’re going to beat them."
