World Footy News

The NZ Hawks will soon finalise their travelling squad of 26 players for the 2011 International Cup. Pleasingly the average age has continued to decrease from 25 in 2002, to 23 in 2008 to around 21 for 2011. What any youth-focused programme would wish to see is that players will ‘buy in’ to the sport and continue through to the seniors. With 18 players graduating from previous NZ Hawks Under 16 and Under 20 NZ teams can be happy that this is being achieved, as that represents 46% of the squad.

There is only one player of the 2002 squad looking to return nine years later and that is key forward Richard Bradley who was one of five teenagers in that team. He again returned in the 2005 Champion team and his team mates from then David Cory-Toussaint and Andrew Marsden are part of the extended squad. Eight players in total from the 2008 squad are hoping to return, which is just under a third. I would expect that that is fairly standard across the board for all the nations.

The squad currently comprises 21 from Auckland, 11 from Canterbury, 4 from Waikato and 3 from Wellington - giving a wide geographical spread across the nation.

The final squad will be decided after a camp this weekend, with other training camps to follow in Mid June and Mid July.

The support team for the Hawks are:

Coach: Justin Davies
Assistant Coach: Andrew Congalton
Assistant Coach: Rob Vanstam
Manager: Jarrod Darlington
Physio: Jenny Lucy
Runner/ Player Welfare: Tim Stevens

Preliminary squad of 39 for the International Cup, to be cut to 26 after this weekend: