Napier Boys’ High v Hastings Boys’ High 1st XV rugby: The build-up to Hawke’s Bay’s biggest school clash

The scene-setter two years ago when the first XVs of Napier and Hastings boys' high schools last played their annual Super 8 match in Napier. Photo / NZME.

The big annual Super 8 rugby between traditional Hawke’s Bay secondary campus powerhouses Napier and Hastings boys’ high schools will be played in rare circumstances on Saturday.

Each side goes into the battle at high noon at Napier BHS having been beaten in their most recent Super 8 schools matches last Friday. Napier’s trip to Gisborne was blighted by a 13-7 loss to Gisborne BHS, while Hastings butchered the home-ground advantage when beaten 33-19 by Palmerston North BHS.

It was a reversal of 2024 form, when both sides had won going into the Battle of the Bay which Napier won 28-27 in Hastings, early in a season which ended with Gisborne and Palmerston North engineering Hawke’s Bay’s earliest exit from the Hurricanes region national Top Four playoffs.

The situation of both sides being beaten in their last matches before the local derby goes back to before Hastings last won the big match, 25-14, in Hastings in 2022.

Current head coaches, new Napier BHS mentor Willie Tran, and second-year Hastings coach Karl Lowe, both former Hawke’s Bay Magpies, are old boys of the respective schools, with experience of the big match from the same era.

Yet the simplest estimation of how it will go in 2025 comes from yet another Magpie-turned-coach in Hastings assistant Jason Shoemark who, with over 220 matches in Super Rugby and the NPC, still found something missing.

The thrill of high school first XV rugby all but bypassed him, playing for Pompallier Catholic College in Whangarei in occasional mid-week games in Northland, where Saturday rugby was mainly played with clubs.

“Both teams will be hurting,” he said this week.

“We haven’t really hit our straps yet, and we didn’t really fire a shot against Palmerston North Boys’ High School.”

In the natural rotation of first XV rugby, the side is built around the seniority of front rowers Isareli (Izzy) Qanavalu and JJ Lilo-Iosefo and wing Raef Robinson, all in their third season with the school.

As is a given across the Super 8 spectrum, they also have a good first five-eighths and goalkicker in Tana Faumuina.

Hastings were quickly down 13-0 on Friday, and it was 16-12 at halftime, when they soon afterwards scored two tries to take control of the match.

The Hastings tries were scored by fullback Gabe Dehar, centre Triumph Voice, and Lilo-Iosefo, the captain.

Gisborne BHS had been beaten 51-8 by PNBHS in their first Super 8 match of the season, in Gisborne, but huge defence found Napier unprepared.

They were unable to score for the first 62 of the 70 minutes in the match, and, down 13-0, Napier’s only points came from a try to hooker and captain Riley Mullany and a conversion to second five-eighths Will Lovatt.

Tran, whose wider coaching team includes Tom and Ted Symes, Magpie-turned-referee Dan Waenga (who has a son in the Super 8 squad) and Sport Hawke’s Bay CEO Ryan Hambleton, has a squad including many of those he knew in seven years successfully coaching Napier in the Ross Shield primary schools tournament.

He said Napier lacks some size, but dominated Gisborne, without managing to capitalise and “bombed at least four tries” and “just couldn’t get that final pass in”.

“The great thing about first XV rugby is you get to learn.”

He said school deputy head boy Mullany had done “exceptionally well”, converted from No 8 last year to the centre of the front row in 2025.

Other features of the squad include vice-captains Carlo Mienie, an open-side flanker, and No 8 Carter Price.

Saturday’s game starts at noon, preceded by the schools’ second XVs match starting at 10.30am, Napier having beaten Gisborne 54-7 last week, but Hastings having been beaten 53-5 by PNBHS.

Meanwhile, Lindisfarne College maintained an unbeaten record in four matches in their Central North Island Schools competition with a 65-5 victory over fellow Hastings side St John’s College last Thursday.

They are away to Whanganui Collegiate this Saturday, and the following weekend are at home to Feilding High School, which last season trod historic ground as the first co-ed school to win the Hurricanes region competition, and thus make the national schools semifinals.

Lindisfarne share the CNI competition lead with Cambridge school St Peter’s, who they play in Hastings on July 25.