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Home / Bay of Plenty Times

Gary Hamilton-Irvine: Rotorua Boys' remain champions to core

Rotorua Daily Post
21 Sep, 2015 01:00 AM4 mins to read

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Rotorua Boys' High School have every right to feel hard done by after what's unfolded these past couple of weeks.

It's been a trying period for the champion rugby school after claiming the New Zealand 1st XV title a fortnight ago.

They received plenty of pats on the back after winning that title - and rightly so - but they've also been at the centre of two controversial decisions.

First: They were punished for a clear mistake, in my view, relating to fielding two returning players.

And second: They were overlooked completely when it came to picking the New Zealand Schools rugby team.

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The latter was nothing short of a joke.

The national champions, Rotorua, were completely overlooked for the 26-man New Zealand Schools squad going to Australia this week as well as the 25-man New Zealand Barbarians Schools squad who played at the weekend.

The most common argument I've heard to defend Rotorua's omission was their players were too old to make the New Zealand Schools team - reserved for players aged under 18 at the start of this year.

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But Rotorua coach Ngarimu Simpkins revealed 19 of his 22-strong squad were eligible to play in the team. Surely one of those 19 had shown enough form in their charge to the national title to warrant a spot.

The second decision which has gone against Rotorua in the last couple of weeks was a punishment handed down to them relating to a match in the Super 8 competition, a month and a half ago.

The background to that controversy is as follows:

The New Zealand Secondary Schools Sports Council (NZSSSC) added a new clarification to a rule around what constitutes a new player at high schools. They added the clarification to their website at the end of April but it was not directly sent to schools.

Problems arose when Rotorua Boys' fielded two returning students this year.

The two players had attended Rotorua Boys' before leaving on a gap year. They returned home early this year following a bereavement and decided to go back to school.

The pair played in matches against Hamilton Boys' (on August 8) and New Plymouth Boys' (on August 29) - the latter being a qualifying match to make the National Top 4 competition.

The issue was schools can only include six students new to the school in their squads for any given game but in those games they had eight, counting those two boys.

Rotorua have stated they didn't know those two boys had to be counted as new to the school, having done all their schooling there in the past.

They also said they were not sent the clarification which was posted on the NZSSSC website in April, which reads: "a student's most recent enrolment date at the school must be used".

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The New Zealand Schools Rugby Union (NZSRU) investigated and called the breach against Napier Boys' "a genuine mistake". They decided to allow Rotorua to move on to the National Top 4 clearing them of wrong doing.

However, the organisers of another competition played earlier in the year, the Super 8 competition, were far less lenient.

They decided Rotorua should be relegated from second to eighth in that competition as a result.

Fortunately for Rotorua that had no impact on their national title.

I for one don't agree with the Super 8 relegation at all.

I think the NZSRU got it completely right in calling it a genuine mistake and dealing with it as such.

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Quite simply, Rotorua Boys' claim they hadn't even seen the new clarification which was published online, and they didn't try to hide anything.

Rotorua named all their boys in plain sight on the team sheet before each game and as soon as they were informed something was wrong, they abided by the rules.

If they had tried to hide something it would have suggested a deliberate breach but they clearly didn't.

In my view, it was an honest mistake and Rotorua Boys' are completely deserving of their time in the spotlight this year as national champs.

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