Today, across the country, 1000 little kids begin their first season of rugby. GRAHAM REID finds there is no shortage of enthusiasm but money is tight at club level, especially where families are struggling.
The sky is an unblemished azure canopy, the temperature is tipping effortlessly toward the mid-20s, and Chris Cairns saving the Black Caps from humiliation by touring Australians is still fresh in the memory.
Around the suburbs, informal games of cricket and the occasional club match are still being played out. But here, at Kaipatiki Park on Auckland's North Shore, after a couple of weeks of practice on long summer afternoons, a few hundred kids are already playing friendly interclub rugby, the code we once referred to as "a winter sport."
After the final whistle, metre-high players stagger from the field, some with gap-toothed grins and others wrung to steamy exhaustion. Jerseys designed for wet, cold days weigh them down.
The players make for the water bottles and take long gulps before turning them on friends - and coaches sometimes - for a cooling squirt. Then they gather round their team manager for a few quick words of encouragement and congratulation.
Rugby, at every level, is on again.
The Super 12s and Sevens may be commanding the small screen but, more important for these families demarcating the sideline on the half-sized field, the little ones are embarking on what, for some, will become a lifelong passion.
On this humid day the familiar rituals, as they are across the country, are being enacted again: halftime oranges, tough tackles and tears, the kid who gets the ball and makes an unimpeded sprint toward his own goal line, the advice from the sideline hammered home by repetition ("straighten up, straighten up" and "go low, go low"), and the occasional coach running on to the field with a bottle of the holy water which assuages all pain.
A decade ago, according to New Zealand Rugby Union statistics, 35 teams of under-7s took to the paddock for the first time. Five years ago there were 37 teams of newcomers and last year 49. Figures for under-8s, 9s and 10s show similar incremental increases.
Although it is too early in the season for accurate predictions, anecdotal evidence from several clubs suggests first-time enrolment figures, despite the World Cup humiliation, will be similar to last year and perhaps even up.
With Super 12 starting so early, rugby garners a high profile even before Chris Cairns fades from our consciousness.
Midmorning at Glenfield and J6 manager Tracy - "I'm Walter Little's wife, what choice did I have?" - is reminding the team of practice and how parents have to remember to stay behind the goalposts next week. That's the rule.
This is the first year these kids are allowed to tackle and, on the evidence of today's friendly run, they are just loving it. Next year will be their first in boots and already many can't wait.
This year's team also has two girls. They're good, says Little, and they don't complain about tackles on the hard ground.
"There's not a lot of girls playing rugby, and there should be. There's no sport for girls at this age, they can't play netball until they're eight."
Little's life revolves around rugby. Like most managers and coaches, she started on the sideline watching her own first child play. She's done Small Blacks (the under-7s and 8s) and a referees' course ("I'm a bloody organised person"), and says it's important to learn the rules and "watch for the crappy habits" some bring from seeing the big guys on television.
For Glenfield's Black Panthers she works alongside coach Kevin Watts, assistant coach Owen Hughes and assistant manager Donna Oliver, all of them parents.
The Littles live in Torbay but Glenfield is their family club - and she's just about convinced the neighbour's kid to play for the team. They'll make sure he gets to games.
Her dad and his brothers played for Glenfield, so did Walter and his. It makes a difference for her kids, she admits. "There are dad's photos and Uncle Lawrence's photos in the clubhouse." There's also a Walter Little Room.
The club's early focus is on kids just loving the game. Each week players in her team put $2 into a fund used for trophies and certificates of achievement.
"Everyone gets one, even if its for best orange-eater, best sportsman or whatever," she says. She keeps a record of who-got-what, so by the end of the season all players have received the same number. But of course they don't know that.
"The kids enjoy it. And if they walk off and say, 'That was cool fun,' then it's worth it. If they are not enjoying it, we look at that child and say to ourselves, 'What can we do to make them enjoy it?'"
She speaks of newsletters of rules for parents, fundraising for prizegiving, reminding parents about mouthguards. It's a lot of work, not the least of it in raising money.
Rugby might be a multimillion-dollar business, but at club level money can be tight. And everyone will tell you fundraising through club bars has been hit by the drink-drive message. Finding sponsors is always tough, especially for juniors.
Glenfield's fees are $40 a child and $80 for the family. Down the road at Birkenhead Rugby they are $45 a single and $60 a family. The club is highly organised. New members get a bag, jacket, shorts and a mouthguard, says juniors' delegate Lester Dallow.
Last year's annual report boasts numerous small sponsors from the local community. But quite what commercial benefit Bruce Blackett at Rex Wheels and Castors - which manufactures industrial conveyor belts and heavy-duty trolleys - gets is difficult to discern.
"I believe businesses should put something back into their local community," says Blackett, who has been a player, past president and chairman of the club. As with the Littles at Glenfield, this is his family club. His son played for Northcote-Birkenhead, and now his grandson.
Blackett was one of many who put $300 into the hat to be drawn for sponsorship of the senior team, which allows the chosen company name recognition on jerseys and signage.
"It's more or less a donation," he says, "but what sports clubs do is not often appreciated."
Some years ago, when the North Shore City Council was intending to raise ground fees, he did a personal survey of the voluntary time put in by club members. It came up around 11000 hours annually.
"Multiply that by all the clubs around the country and you've got probably got $9 or $10 million a year of voluntary community labour in sports clubs."
Out in the flatland state-house streets of Mangere, where families are struggling, volunteer coaches and managers are no more difficult to find than at other clubs, but sponsorship is harder to come by, say Marilyn and Bob Price.
Both are heavily involved in fundraising for a club that they acknowledge is "not well off." Fees here are accordingly low: $12 a player, $20 a family.
At Manukau Rovers' training ground at Viscount Rd School, Mangere, where motorway traffic marks the perimeter of the school grounds, no America's Cup sweatshirts are evident. Parents here wear Ice Cube T-shirts and beanies. A couple of coaches haven't turned up for this early-season run so a mother with a baby on hip takes little kids for a runaround.
But, as elsewhere, the kids are keen and what the club lacks in financial resources, it makes up for in family atmosphere, says Marilyn Price. "There are a lot of marrieds in the club."
They can boast impressive numbers, too. For the under-8s on this early-season training run, 17 kids have showed up, Bob guesses 20 all up in a few weeks. Two teams of 10-aside. They get tremendous parental support and kids stay on until they leave, around intermediate years, to play for school teams.
Bob Price says they haven't had a 17-year-old team for a while, "and the 18- to 19-year-olds? Not for three years." But a lot come back with their own kids or to see family members play. As Marilyn says, "It's like a big family."
Manukau Rovers experiences unique problems too, she says. For registration, young ones might be asked to bring their birth certificates or passports, and some parents are understandably suspicious.
"Language can be a problem but we just sit with everyone and explain it carefully," she says. They photocopy what they need and give papers back immediately.
She's always on the scout for spare pairs of boots to sell through notices.
The Rugby Union supplied a bag with "a coupla pens, vouchers for McDonalds or Rainbows End, that sort of thing," says Bob. "It's not a lot ... bumper stickers and stuff. Years ago the kids got some shaving cream!"
He'd like to see training and match balls provided. At the moment they get them through the club senior management committee and they are collected at the end of the season. As with jerseys, "most of them come back."
The Prices love their rugby, especially seeing little kids play. It's what's unique about us, says Marilyn. They've had Romanian and Japanese teams through who've been surprised seeing these little guys out playing touch in bare feet, and people come down from the airport motels across the road to watch.
Wherever these Small Blacks play, for parents, extended family and friends the attention is on the kids who this week will get home from practice with another jersey to be washed, and were last night sitting in front of television cheering when the Highlanders or Blues, Reds or Stormers made that life-affirming try.
Today they will all be an Umaga or Cullen in their own eyes. At Glenfield, Mangere, Northcote and dozens of clubs around the country, you too can see it in those eyes.
Just loving it.
Small change for Small Blacks
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