CANTERBURY RUGBY LEAGUE BOARD STATEMENT – CONFERENCE LEAGUE
Kia ora koutou,
Canterbury Rugby league is proud that so many of you care deeply about our players, our clubs, and the future of the game in our region. That passion has come through clearly in recent conversations online about the new CRL Conference League, and we wish to acknowledge it and respond accordingly.
In terms of the Board’s role – governance is our job, not the day to day running of our game. Decisions like the Conference League sit with our clubs and our staff, exactly where they should sit. On this occasion, though, we felt it was important for the Board to share more context with our community and to stand in support of our operational staff.
We were disappointed that some of that conversation named individual CRL staff members and was less than positive towards them. As a BOard we have a duty of care to our staff, a responsibility we take seriously. We understand people feel strongly, and we welcome that. We only ask that our community extend the same manaakitanga to our staff that we ask of everyone on and around the field. Our staff turn up every day to serve a large and diverse rugby league whānau, doing their best to serve your needs. They won’t always get everything right in everyone’s eyes, and that’s alright, that’s what open kōrero and feedback are for. We simply ask that whatever we think of a decision, we treat the people carrying it out with the mana and respect we all deserve.
We thought it important to share more about how this decision came about, because it helps explain why our staff and our clubs supported it. Firstly, the Conference League was not decided by CRL staff on their own. Changes like this go to our Club Presidents meetings, where club presidents, who hold the mandate to speak for their clubs, discuss them at length. CRL listens, weighs up the risks versus rewards, and adopts the changes into practice.
The concept was first raised after the 2025 season, when a club brought a general business item to a Presidents meeting about the difficulty of retaining players. Their concern, shared across the room, was that Division One did not meet the competitive needs of players who had no visible pathway back to Premier Reserves or Premiers rugby league. Clubs agreed something needed to change to attract and retain players in senior men’s rugby league.
CRL proposed the Conference League concept at that meeting. Clubs asked to see it in writing before deciding, so CRL prepared a detailed written proposal and brought it back to the next Presidents meeting. There, the concept was almost unanimously supported. At that time, clubs acknowledged the potential risks and backed the change regardless, because many saw a genuine need to reignite men’s rugby league across Canterbury.
It’s also worth recognising that the competition landscape has kept shifting since then (as it always does from one season to the next), with clubs moving between grades and competitions. CRL had also been working to support a return to an eight-team Premiers competition, and was conscious of the risk of a smaller Premiers competition without enough depth. The Conference League was designed, in part, to support non-Premiers clubs’ ambitions to grow into that space.
We know change is not always comfortable. Rugby league in Canterbury is growing fast, and CRL is doing it with fewer operational staff than we had before COVID. To keep up with that growth, and keep the game accessible to everyone who wants to play it, we will sometimes need to adapt our competition structures, and not every change will land the way we hope. When that happens, we review it and make changes as necessary. In 2024, our membership asked CRL to run a Youth Grand Final Day on a Sunday, in the same way we do for our Senior Grand Final Day. That carried real risk, too – and last weekend’s Youth Grand Final Day showed what that risk, taken thoughtfully and reviewed honestly, can deliver.
We will review the Conference League at the end of this season in the same way, and adapt it for next season if that is what our clubs and our game need.
We want everyone who wants to play rugby league in our region to have a home here. Getting that right means staying willing to innovate together, and it means holding each other, staff, players, whānau, and Board, to the same standard of respect we’re proud to see on the field. We would genuinely love to hear your feedback on the Conference League, through your club president. All we ask is that it comes with the same aroha and manaakitanga we bring to the rest of our game.
Māu tēnā kīwai o te kete, māku tēnei. Together as a community we can ensure rugby league is thriving in our region.
Ngā mihi nui,
Canterbury Rugby League Board
