Plans are afoot for a potential fleeting visit by top NRL club Melbourne Storm players and coaches in a bid to further grow the game in Northland.

Rugby League Northland (RLN) chief executive Robbie Johnson
is in talks with the club and if all goes well, coaches and potentially some players will be in Northland around November or December to share tips on how the sport should be run.

Johnson knows Storm general manager of football Frank Ponissi from his days at Manly and flew to Melbourne last month. He spent a week with their players, watched the Storm’s match against the Roosters and attended the team meetings.

He said should the Storm representatives come to Northland, everyone affiliated with the sport in the region would learn a lot from one of the best in the business.

“I rang [Ponissi]. They’ve run coaching clinics here in New Zealand prior to Covid, but they haven’t been here for a few years so the timing of the phone call was good. We started the initial conversation with just what sort of relationships we can have, and how we can work together.

“Every young kid wants to play in the NRL. That’s their dream, and we’ve had some of the really talented players come out of the Northern Swords and the northern region like James Fisher-Harris, Dylan Brown, Wiremu Greig and Adam Blair. They are home-grown products.”

He said creating a pathway to the NRL will benefit Northland.

Johnson said people would come to games in Northland because they could see a realistic opportunity— a pathway to fulfil a dream.

Generally, he said the pathways meant players started at a club level, then played for their region, and then participated in the national tournament where they got scouted.

“It’s not until you get to the representative level that you get scouted but for me, a big part is growing our game so part of this relationship I am trying to build with the Melbourne Storm is around having the opportunity to grow our coaches, to grow our administrators, our trainers,” Johnson said.

He said talks with the Storm were looking positive and if they planned to come over, they’d be in Northland for between 24 and 48 hours only.

A session with coaches and administrators in Northland and a community focus around kids on the field and getting them in front of some of their superstar players would be on the cards, he said.

“And then I think the other part of that would be them watching a lot of our coaches coaching some of those kids, and then putting some of the finishing touches on them. We want to create something that is sustainable.”

Johnson said a study by the Storm in 2017 looked at how or where players had been recruited from in the NRL and it found the majority of them made their debut for the Storm.

NRL players were hard to get towards the end of the year as it was the beginning of their pre-season, he said.

On other plans to grow the game in Northland, Johnson said women’s competition was on an upward trajectory and RLN was also thinking about getting an academy off the ground.

“So some of the players that are currently playing club football, we’ll be able to put a little bit of extra work in them which will be able to filter down to the clubs. We’ll use all available resources, both locally and internationally, to run the academy.

The Warriors’ stellar season so far also helped with the growth of rugby league in Northland, he said.

“There are a lot more people that are a lot more interested in rugby league right now, and it’s a fantastic time now to be part of the rugby league community. There’s always been talk about having an extra NRL club from NZ. They’ve realised there’s a huge amount of talent, and the Warriors are only one part of the equation,” Johnson said.

Northland has about 1000 rugby league players in all grades.