Perhaps the bridging idea could come from the SIHL Open grade? The Dunedin Open grade team could be used as a Thunder development team perhaps?

And then the open grade team and Thunder could combine along with a few other senior players to form a three team local contact DIHL? The level of play would be quite high but not so high that the new Junior aged players aren’t out of their depth.

Then the weaker Junior aged players who aren’t likely to bridge the gap to the Thunder any time soon anyway would be able to move to the SNC DIHL rather than getting their asses kicked by in the contact DIHL.

Also realise that a lot of the other juniors in other regions will eventually end up at some sort of University, and odds are that uni will be Otago. So having a NZIHL team based in Dunedin is important. Just look at Rick Parry where would he have played if there was no Dunedin team.

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If rumour has it correct we may well see a couple of very handy players from ChCh attending Uni next year. Throw them in with 5 imports and boom! instant winning formulae