Premier Rugby

QRU Board member and Premier Rugby Committee Chairman Ross Williams' summation

"Each Premier team is the representative team of that sub-union in the Premier competition. Applications for Premier team fall through the sub-union to the QRU for assessment by the Premier Rugby Committee and thereafter by the Board. A Premier team needs to meet certain criteria which have been developed in the past by Luke Wyatt and although not all criteria need to be met, some demonstrated ability to eventually meet the criteria must be proven.The QRU has discussed this methodology with Darling Downs, Townsville and more recently Logan. It is long established that the Gold Coast Cyclones will continue to compete in the Queensland Country Championships. This was a point which was taken up in the discussions when we were unifying the Gold Coast sub-union with the Breakers."

The Trinity Queensland Premier Rugby (QPR) competition evolved out of the Brisbane club competition and was created by the QRU for players, administrators, referees and coaches to be exposed at a higher level and improve the standard of Queensland non-professional rugby.

The Trinity QPR provides a stepping stone to the newly formed ARC and other professional rugby competitions.

The 2007 Trinity Queensland Premier Rugby competition involves 10 teams in total:

Gold Coast Breakers , Sunshine Coast Stingrays , Brothers, Easts, GPS , Norths QUT , Souths, Sunnybank, University , Wests.

Rugby Gold Coast is represented by the City Finance Breakers team in the QPR Competition while the Stingrays represent the Sunshine Coast Rugby Union in the same competition.

In future, teams from other Rugby regions may also join the competition, thus encouraging the pursuit of Rugby excellence across the state, not just confining it to one corner.

Some Premier Rugby players aspire to play professionally in the future, either in Australia or overseas, while others just want to be the best Rugby players they can be, without making it their career.

They may not yet be household names, but all are talented and committed and play the game to win.

Contracted players are not excluded from the Trinity Queensland Premier Rugby competition, but neither is it dependent on them for success.

Premier Rugby is played by Rugby's “local heroes” at local grounds, where the local Under 7s can watch and learn from these elite players at close quarters - and then get their autograph after the game.

Weekly news about Trinity Queensland Premier Rugby can be found in The Courier-Mail (online at http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/rugbyunion/), Quest local newspapers, the Sunshine Coast Daily and Gold Coast Bulletin, and on ABC radio via Troy Robbins' weekly podcasts.

You can subscribe to the podcast via an RSS feed. This podcast allows you to hear the latest show in a downloadable, quality format.

To subscribe to the podcast copy the following address and paste it into your podcasting software: http://www.abc.net.au/brisbane/sportpodcast.xml

QPR works within the Competition Policy and the Premier Criteria policies of Queensland Rugby.

Referee appointments can be found at this link.future, teams from other Rugby regions may also join the competition, thus encouraging the pursuit of Rugby excellence across the state, not just confining it to one corner.