{"id":60604,"date":"2025-08-11T18:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T18:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/60604\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T18:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T18:20:08","slug":"ratana-rugby-league-club-expands-programme-after-2024-inception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/60604\/","title":{"rendered":"R\u0101tana Rugby League Club expands programme after 2024 inception"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March this year, the junior programme was introduced with more than 200 children registering across the seven different age grades from Under-6 to U18.<\/p>\n

Several of the age-grade teams won their respective competitions in their first season.<\/p>\n

Herewini\u2019s parter, Maria Paul, said the club was made up from players from as far as Wellington, Auckland, Taihape, Waverley, Feilding and Whanganui.<\/p>\n

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cR\u0101tana isn\u2019t just subjected to the people from here, I think a lot of people think you have to be from R\u0101tana or have affiliations to R\u0101tana but it is open to anyone of all ages,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n

Paul said she has noticed a increase of girls that want to play rugby league.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe age-grade category is a mean platform for them for building a foundation and understanding rugby league and moving into having a stronger senior team,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Paul said R\u0101tana has an abundance of sporting talent, with the women\u2019s team consisting of former Queensland Reds player Talia Lawrence, New Zealand Kiwis wider squad member Paris Porche while the men\u2019s side are stocked with former NRL contracted players such as Paulie Manuel and Brooklyn Herewini.<\/p>\n

Paul said the goal for the Premier teams this season is to go up another level with consistency and keep growing, as the Premiership teams have wider squads of 42 for the women and 32 for the men.<\/p>\n

Paul said funding was one of the biggest barriers to creating a successful rugby league club and said plenty of businesses had backed the club.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith New Zealand rugby league, money isn\u2019t there as much as union and that\u2019s one of the biggest barriers we see at our club and in league,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the major businesses are really tapped into the clubs here so that was one of my biggest struggles last year was to find major sponsors to come on board to help ease that burden for our families.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got so many great ideas and people who can execute them well but it\u2019s that money to back it up to help us achieve that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Premiership season kicked off on August 9, with the men\u2019s team losing 42-12 to the Linton Cobras and the women\u2019s team winning by default.<\/p>\n

AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\n

Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In March this year, the junior programme was introduced with more than 200 children registering across the seven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[25668,9490,64,63,49149,10970,49151,10453,49148,2877,49147,49146,760,49150,85,3605,1547],"class_list":["post-60604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-25668","tag-after","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrating","tag-club","tag-expanded","tag-expands","tag-inception","tag-league","tag-programme","tag-rtana","tag-rugby","tag-since","tag-sports","tag-with","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}