Northern Beaches Inside Back column

"That's the gutsiest performance I've seen in my 40 years in professional football," proud coach Phil Blake told his players at fulltime.

Ned Slack-Smith grew up in Avalon, played his junior rugby at Newport and sat on the Rat Park hill dreaming of the day he'd be out there in the green of Warringah.

But not long after finishing school, the gun back-rower was confronted with a dilemma faced by many before him - stay with his local club or take the financial and educational inducements offered elsewhere?

"Clubs like Sydney Uni, Norths and Randwick have a lot of incentives to attract the best pool of players," Slack-Smith explained. "It's really hard to turn down assisted education, even though you don't want to leave your club."

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The Rats knew they had to act quickly to stop the player drain, setting up the Rising Rats program through the Friends of Warringah group, offering assistance to players and young coaches - men and women - to further their education on and off the field.

Slack-Smith is one of the scholarship's first beneficiaries, enrolling in an online Bachelor of Business course at Charles Sturt University alongside his club career at Warringah. "It's already such an amazing club and this little extra will go a long way to players staying," the 19-year-old said. "I did talk to a few other clubs and they offered plenty of incentives, but the Rats are now able to offer something similar. It's a real smart move for the long-term success of the club."

Warringah vice-president Todd Marks said: "We want to make the northern beaches proud by creating the best high-performance club rugby program in the country. We need this program to fight other codes - and other clubs - with better funding than we have."

The world surfing circuit returns to Manly for the first time in two years with the week-long Sydney Surf Pro from May 17. The event is part of the second-tier Challenger series, as 96 men and 64 women attempt to gain enough ranking points to qualify for the World Championship Tour. There's unrest over the new qualifying format, which sees surfers cut from the tour mid-season, but it will make for some red-hot competition.

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