- What happens when you need to select the players for a representative team?
- Is the player you are training good enough for the representative team?
There are 4 main items to be considered: Discipline, Height, Weight, Skills
Discipline: The key to any forward. Flawless is the desired, Controlled is the acceptable, Collected is the limit. Don't select / don't train reckless forwards. In the backs, the discipline is less critical: There is no significant different between Flawless-Controlled-Collected and Reckless is acceptable. Still, rebellious players should not be trained.
Weight: Discipline + Weight determine whether a player is a forward or a back. Any player (except rebellious players) can potentially be trained. But the discipline and the weight will determine where the player needs to play.
| 80kg | 85kg | 90kg | 95kg | 100kg | 105kg | 110kg | 115kg | 120kg | 125kg | 130kg | 135+kg | |
| Rebellious | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Reckless | back | back | back | back | back | back | back | back | back | back | back | back |
| Collected | back | back | back | back | back | back/loose forward | back/forward* | forward* | forward | forward | forward | forward |
| Controlled | back | back | back | back | back/openside | back/loose forward | back/forward* | forward* | forward | forward | forward | forward |
| Flawless | back | back | back | back | back/openside | back/loose forward | forward* | forward* | forward | forward | forward | forward |
* except front rower
Height: The height determines where in the forwards the player will play.
170cm .. 190cm: front row or openside
190cm .. 200cm: front row or loose forward (any loose forward)
200cm+ : blindside or lock
Skills: This is the hard part. There are several ways of considering the skills: skill values (primary, secondary or both), Total Skill Points (TSP), Salary, CSR... What we are going to give here is an indication of the minimum CSR values a player should have to be considered. Please note that to meet the CSR minimum requirement does not mean the player is good enough. Please note that having only cores is not good enough. Please note that two different players can have very similar CSRs and one be good enough and not the other.
Example 1: A 410K CSR player
Example 2: A 400K CSR player
Player 1 is good enough despite being only 410K CSR whereas player 2 is not good enough. CSR is about the same, but player 1 has a TSP of 151 whereas player to has a TSP of only 140.
CSR is not a good measure of how ready the player is to be a NT/u20 representative.
18 yo: minimum CSR: 80K, target CSR: 100K
19 yo: minimum CSR: 120K, target CSR: 140K
20 yo: minimum CSR: 160K, target CSR: 180K
...
23 yo: minimum CSR: 260K, target CSR: 300K
24 yo: minimum CSR: 300K, target CSR: 340K
25 yo: minimum CSR: 330K, target CSR: 380K
26 yo: minimum CSR: 360K, target CSR: 420K
For a better understanding on how ready the player is, combine the values above with the TSP values below.
18 yo: minimum TSP: 80, target TSP: 90
19 yo: minimum TSP: 90, target TSP: 105
20 yo: minimum TSP: 100, target TSP: 120
...
23 yo: minimum TSP: 125, target TSP: 140
24 yo: minimum TSP: 135, target TSP: 150
25 yo: minimum TSP: 145, target TSP: 160
26 yo: minimum TSP: 150, target TSP: 165
A side note: Experience.
Being extremely important, I have left experience aside for this post. There is a reason for this. Whereas the considerations above might help in deciding HOW TO TRAIN a representative player, the experience goes in a completely independent way: the higher, the better. For any position. Therefore, experience will not determine the training regime or what position the player might play in.
