Wallabies Wycliff Palu and Dave Dennis on a mission to save rugby in western Sydney

ALARMED by the plight of rugby in western Sydney, two Wallabies have taken matters into their own hands and developed a plan put rugby back on the map out west.

DAVE Dennis and Wycliff Palu want to build a better future for rugby — and kids — in western Sydney.

As in, literally build it.

Alarmed by the trajectory of their game in the west, the senior Wallabies and Waratahs pair have taken matters into their own hands and started planning the construction of a youth development facility at Penrith.

“Now is the perfect time — something has to be done now,” Dennis said.

“Everyone is screaming for it and western Sydney’s growth is only getting bigger and bigger. How long do you wait? Ten to twenty years? The game will be dead.”

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The Waratahs from Western Sydney at training. Picture: Mark Evans

Dennis and Palu sat down with The Daily Telegraph at the Wallabies’ Sunshine Coast camp this week to share their vision for the first time.

The recent fortunes of Penrith — Dennis’ boyhood club — has brought the issue into sharp focus but for the NSW captain, who grew up at Richmond, and Palu, who lives in Plumpton, the struggle of rugby as both a code and a community in the west have been a long-held concern.

“I just feel like kids get lost out there and can’t see an opportunity. Unless you are the dime-a-dozen kid who stands out from the crowd and gets a lucky break,” Dennis said.

“We want to set up something out there that exposes kids to the game to start with, or if they have a small bit of fire inside them that says “hang on, I like this game”, again there is an opportunity to pursue it. I feel like the gap at the moment is that there are a lot of fantastic kids out there who could be fantastic rugby players and play for the Wallabies — I honestly believe that — but that dream can die very quickly because they can’t see a clear pathway. That’s the biggest gap.”

Given NSW Rugby and the ARU have only one development officer servicing the west, many hold similar opinions.

Dennis and Palu have decided to put words into concrete actio​n​ and an expanding file in Dennis’ laptop contains the seeds of a grassroots solution.

Currently junior rugby in the west relies on a hardy bunch of volunteers who run, and self-fund, junior clubs and too-few school teams. Even with the barriers to entry, western Sydney provide huge numbers of players to rep teams from juniors right through to the Waratahs.

Dennis and Palu are keen for rugby programs to return to schools right across the west, potentially ​boosted ​even with the same sort of corporate support the AFL enjoys. ​ There have been nibbles of interest already. ​

But the centrepiece of their plan is building a place where a group of teenage can come to learn rugby, seek mentoring and find opportunities to succeed.

Dave Dennis and Wycliff Palu plan to save rugby in western Sydney. Picture: Luke Marsden.

While support from the ARU and the NSWRU would be welcomed, Dennis says the aim is for the facility to be funded privately and potentially by local government.

Dennis has sought the guidance of Buildcorp co-founder and Sydney Uni mentor Tony Sukkar on construction and program development ideas. A connection with the University of Western Sydney is targeted, close to public transport.

“We’d start with that, maybe 30 kids in the first year and just build and keep going. The key is just to get going,” Dennis said.

Palu, who grew up in Manly but is now a proud westie, said: “What I see out there is there is a big Island community out there and I know when I was growing up, all I needed was a clear pathway. Probably out there, I just see out there is a lot of potential for kids who if they had a clear pathway to get to rugby, or even just get ahead in life, that would really help the area and the kids out there.”

Dennis is clearly driven by the wrench he still feels about having to quit Penrith and join Sydney Uni in 2003 to pursue rugby and his studies.

Penrith Emus run out before its clash with Parramatta.

“The reason I left because my opinion was there was never any way for me to develop my rugby out there, and also just as a person,” he said.

“I look back at 2003 and there’s been no progress. If anything it might have even gone backwards from when I grew up out there.

“That pathway starts from PSSA sport, but as you get into high school and particularly those senior years 10-11-12, when your body is developing a bit more and you are taking the game more seriously, where do you go from there?

“You either go to SG Ball for league for Penrith or you leave it or whatever. There is just a massive gap there.

“My big focus, and the area we want to target is that age group of 15 and up, back end of high school. Expose them to a semi-professional environment, expose them to education and when they do finish school, they have options.”

While keen to give back to the code that gave them so much, Dennis and Palu’s vision is not exclusively tied to rugby. Both say they’re just as keen to help boys and girls who might need mentoring on life, education, family or sport.

“It doesn’t even have to be about rugby. They can go there after school and a Polynesian kid can sit down and talk with Cliff for an hour about his life or school or whatever. That’s just as important as running an hour’s skill session on a field,” Dennis said.

“If you are a 15-year-old or 16-year-old kid, and you want to improve your education, have a crack at rugby, you get the opportunity to come to a venue a couple of days a week, there’s assistance there from myself, Cliff, a guy like Kurtley with indigenous kids. Whatever it might be, they will feel like there is an opportunity there.”

Palu adds: “It has always been a goal of mine, to put back into the game. The game has given me a lot and I can see how it can help a lot of kids. But as Denno said, it doesn’t have to be rugby.”

Similar programs in New Zealand have been hugely successful. Using rugby as a conduit, many teenagers have been gently steered away from troubled paths and turned into rugby stars.

Dennis said Australian rugby would benefit but sees their development plan as separate from to those of the ARU/NSWRU, which are due next month from a review being conducted by Michael Doyle.

“I would like to think they are encouraged by the enthusiasm myself, Cliffy and others have got to develop people out there, and what we do, they end getting reward from in terms of development,” he said.

“I would like to think NSW and ARU assist us however they can. That’s not asking for millions of dollars, it can be with helping to run clinics, equipment, players, whatever. It doesn’t have to be financial.”

Dennis and Palu still have several years left in their playing careers but hope their vision can soon be translated into bricks, mortar and a ladder of opportunity.

“I can see in my head us, within three to five years, having a program up and running. A physical site, and a good program,” Dennis said.

“That’s the dream.”