FFS Youth team with coach Desmond Faaiuaso (front left), Grant Hastings (HBHS), Scott Easthope (FFS mentor), Mick Darmody (HBHS) and assistant coach Masato Tsuchiya (FFS). PHOTO/Duncan Brown
ROUGH DIAMONDS, coach Grant Hastings labels them, but now there's a chance for soccer players of Samoan heritage to sparkle on the international stage.
That's because the Hastings Boys' High School football academy has, through Hastings, developed a rapport with Federation Football Samoa (FFS) to cut and polish some of the gems into carat quality.
"They are generally athletic. I suppose they don't get exposed to football early enough so we're playing a little bit of catch up with their skills set," says the HBHS director of football after meeting a delegation of the FFS Youth team who are in Hawke's Bay to compete in the annual Lotto Under-19 Youth Tournament at Park Island, Napier, from today.
The FFS Youth are in the lower-tier Satellite Draw section of the Napier City Rovers-run tourney. The visitors are in group F and open their account at 10am on pitch 5 today against Taupo.
FFS officials met HBHS administrators on Thursday to bed down a few details at the school in the hope of having a concrete template by the end of this year.
Six months ago Hastings got in touch with FFS director of football who was keen to build a rapport with HBHS for players with Samoan heritage.
"He agreed that it was a great concept and he also agreed that if he can sort out some senior high schoolboys to get out for some exposure to New Zealand football and education then they would be really keen on creating a relationship."
HBHS principal Rob Sturch, he says, was "quite rapt" with the concept.
"Hastings Boys' High recognise big picture stuff because it's about finding pathways for these Samoan boys to keep them involved so it just shows we care rather than just being a school."
Hastings says 14 Year 10 HBHS academy pupils had sat and passed a club-based referees' programme that Central Football had conducted this year.
Last week Central Football administrator Leon Birnie conducted an introduction to a coaching course for Year 10 academy pupils and they passed that too.
"They now have refereeing and coaching qualifications so they can pick which path they want to go down in the future because some may not want to carry on playing but I know one of them is regularly running the lines in senior men's football on Saturdays on the back of his club-based refereeing programme."
Hastings likens that continuity to schools finding football clubs for those attending universities.
"The Samoa thing is another step so it's great for Samoa football to support boys here and give their players the opportunity to come here to play."
He has a 20-strong Year 9 academy of which only three aren't Polynesians.
"They aren't all Samoans. Five or six are but we have Cook Island, Maori and other Pasifika boys."
Hastings says people often ask him: "How do you know if you're not sitting on the next Roy Krishna?
"How do you know the next boy coming from Samoa isn't the next Roy Krishna?"
He feels there's nothing stopping the islanders from going on to represent Thirsty Whale Hawke's Bay United or Wellington Phoenix.
While it was his first year with Year 9 academy boys, Hastings has been mentoring Flaxmere school youngsters previously.
Generally schools such as Flaxmere Primary and Irongate School often introduce pupils to the game in the open grade whereas other schools inject their players from the age of 5.
"So they don't have that initial grounding but they catch up pretty quick," he says, revealing his Year 9 academy team this year finished third in the Bay junior B competition.
Year 10 team Timua Chriton, he rates, as a fine goalkeeper.
Hastings says the island boys' willingness to succeed and attitude to training are second to none.
While their parents have rugby and rugby league backgrounds, surprisingly many children don't play the sport.
He says the strong Polynesian community and network via the school will provide billets for any Samoa boys who come from the islands to spend a year here.
"It's just exciting and another chapter on what Hastings Boys are offering footballers around the region."
He doesn't believe HBHS-groomed players will have an edge over their island counterparts but that's what's exciting about the partnership.
FFS technical mentor Scott Easthope says their squad of 18 comprises mostly under-17 players and four under-20 Samoa representatives who will come under scrutiny from Kiwi talent scouts.
Easthope says the oldest are two 18-year-olds and the youngest, on an observer capacity on the trip, is 13-year-old Jarvis Alatise, a striker from Vaivase Primary School.
The 31-year-old from Wellington says they grabbed a late opportunity to enter the satellite tournament for some game time.
"We're a good group of athletes. Physically we're very good [but] technically there's a massive range within the group," he says, disclosing the younger players tend to be technically more gifted than the older ones who excel in the physicality stakes.
He suspects the FFS Youth team will fare quite well during the weekend.
"They might be a little overawed by the situation earlier on and the first game will be interesting to see how they go mentally but as the tournament goes on we're expecting them to get stuck in and they'll be very difficult to beat because of their physical ability."
Because of their regional/national team stature, FFS Youth aren't allowed to progress to playoffs from their pool.
Easthope says they agreed it won't be fair on other New Zealand teams trying to progress to the main draw next year if FFS Youth were allowed to progress.
"We came here knowing that and we're happy we the competitive fixtures we'll be getting in pool play."
The cooler climes will affect them but the squad is "well rugged up".
While they were nutting out details, the vision is that HBHS will take at least one player in their late teens each year for grooming as a footballer through the school's academy as well as allowing him to pursue academic goals in a year.
"We'll be pushing for Jarvis to be the younger to come out from a younger player perspective."
Easthope says every little experience here will be a massive stride to the teenagers' development.
"Two days ago they played on astroturf in Auckland so 90 per cent of them had never played on that sort of field before."
While it's a rugby-driven mad country, soccer numbers "are going through the roof" in Samoa.
The increase in funding had boosted grassroots participation, especially though the schools.
"Our nationals teams will eventually realise the profits from that."
Easthope doesn't believe the growth of the code will eclipse the passion Samoans have for rugby but it does have the appeal of a family-orientated sport.
"Once we produce better pathways with the connections we're trying to build here it'll only increase opportunities for players in Samoa and that'll be fantastic."
The team's U17 national goalkeeper is studying at One Tree Hill College scholarship in Auckland but the FFS hasn't got any other initiatives in New Zealand, apart from HBHS, to expose their players.
"It'll be the first of it's kind for FFS, with Hastings Boys' High, so for us it'll be exciting times and we're looking forward to it."
Easthope reckons those of Samoan heritage at HBHS "have every opportunity" to represent the island nation internationally.
"That's because the school is very proactive around letting us know what's going on around their Samoan football perspective so that puts them in a better position than other people."
According to retired Central Football Eastern operations manager Phil Holt, of Napier, the tourney has had All Whites under-16 and under-17 World Cup-bound teams here but FFS Youth are the first foreign international team to compete in the popular Rovers tourney.