Wallabies great Toutai Kefu has urged administrators and supporters to be patient with the National Rugby Championship as the discussion around development pathways continues to reverberate around Australian rugby.
Two games into his first year as coach of Queensland Country, Kefu is still finding his feet at NRC level having coached in Japan and taken on the top job with Tonga.
"I'm enjoying it," Kefu told ESPN of his NRC experiences so far. "The group that I've got, both players and staff, are a great bunch of blokes. We get along pretty well and the players I've got, they're young and there's a bit of potential there; we're having fun."
With the Wallabies having dropped six straight Test matches ahead of this weekend's clash with the Springboks, the heat has come not only for coach Michael Cheika but so too the Australian Rugby Union and its overhaul grassroots plan.
Former Wallabies back Brett Papworth was scathing in his recent appraisal of the game's administrators while Fairfax Media this week reported on proposed changes to schoolboy rugby - though they look like having little effect on Sydney's GPS competition.
As for the NRC, opinion seems to be split over whether its introduction was the right decision or if a move to semi-professionalism for the club competitions in Brisbane and Sydney may have been a better play.
But the NRC did achieve a significant milestone last week when Reece Hodge completed a rapid 12-month transition from the North Harbour Rays to the Wallabies in just 12 months.
"I think if you look at individuals, it could be different...Reece Hodge, it was quite quick, I think it was only a couple of years; there's Rory Arnold who's in the Wallabies setup," Kefu said of the NRC pathway.
"But if you don't look to that [Test] extent; maybe just look to Super, we've got a young kid, young James Tuttle, he started NRC and then the next year he got a Reds contract. So it can happen quite quickly, but it just depends on the demands of the franchise and the level of the player."
Back-to-back defeats to the All Blacks have left Australian rugby supporters wondering if they'll ever see the Bledisloe Cup again, such is the bottomless pit of talent pouring out of New Zealand.
Australia will never be able to match the depth in talent of its trans-Tasman rival, but Kefu has seen enough in the NRC to suggest that player base can at least grow and he called on supporters to help raise the competition's profile.
"I think you've got to be patient, like I said it could be a couple of years or it could be five years," Kefu said.
"I think the public is still probably warming towards the NRC; the ARU is just trying to get the public more engaged and trying to get more of a connection between the fans and the NRC.
"In Brisbane, it's probably not too much of a problem because we've got two iconic teams in terms of the (Queensland] Country team and the Brisbane [City] team. But I definitely think the Sydney teams could probably get more support."
