Gregor Paul: The significance of two unique Super Rugby rookies

OPINION:

The Pacific Islands are the offshore talent pipeline we know about, but New Zealand appears to be cultivating secret new markets from which it is luring players to Aotearoa

On Saturday, 19-year-old Fabian Holland from the Netherlands made his Super Rugby debut for the Highlanders, while a few weeks back the German flanker Anton Segner made his for the Blues.

These two share broadly similar stories in that they grew up in football-mad countries, but through the magic of satellite TV, became rugby-obsessed.

Or more specifically, they became fixated with the idea of playing for the All Blacks – so much so, that in their mid-teens, they were prepared to leave their respective families behind, pack themselves off to school in New Zealand and attempt to fulfil their dream of playing professional rugby.

Fabian Holland in action for the Highlanders. Photo /Getty

Holland, in his 20-minute debut off the bench against the Blues, certainly looked capable.

At 2.04m he's got the physique to be a serious test candidate at lock when he qualifies for New Zealand once he's served his five-year residency.

The respective stories of Holland and Segner are not so different from the hundreds if not thousands of teenagers from Fiji, Samoa and Tonga who have left their homeland at a frighteningly young age, their possessions in a napkin Dick Whittington-style and their heads full of this idea that the streets will be paved with gold in New Zealand.

And yet, while it's not different, it feels like it is not the same thing at all for significant reasons.

There is no sense of exploitation being part of the story with Holland and Segner the way there is with the Pacific Island teen recruits who come to New Zealand.

The two Europeans are open and honest that they did not come to New Zealand in search of a better education.

They are here with one, clear, stated goal which is to advance their rugby prowess in the land they believe is the spiritual home of the game.

Compare this with the legion of boys who have been actively recruited from the Islands, sold a story that they will be coming to New Zealand as holistic beneficiaries of better schooling, yet sensing once they get there that they might have been duped because the institutions where they end up, seem more interested in their athletic rather than their academic ability.

The great untold story is the number of teenagers from the wider Pacific region who have been brought to New Zealand schools over the last two decades and felt exploited – carried a sense that the establishment has got more from them than they have from it.

We only know about the happy endings, the stories of success. The system is celebrated when the likes of Sevu Reece, Shannon Frizell, Vaea Fifita and Samisoni Taukei'aho finish their schooling in New Zealand and go on to become All Blacks.

But there are a significantly greater number of sad endings: stories of kids from coming from the Islands only to be effectively abandoned.

The schools they were at short-changed them academically by holding low expectations and after being encouraged to put all their eggs into the rugby basket, they have few options when they find there is no room for them in the professional game.

The worst part is many teens brought over from the Islands have carried the additional, subliminal pressure of being in New Zealand as potential high-yielding commodities: burdened with the implication that they are expected to provide a return on investment.

Arguably, then, what makes Holland and Segner's stories so different is that they have not been recruited. They are not part of an established system and as such the only expectations they carry are their own.

Their ambition is too big to be fulfilled by their respective homelands. Neither the Netherlands nor Germany have the embedded networks to develop young players to the point where they could interest a professional club in an established rugby nation and hence both Holland and Segner came to New Zealand out of necessity.

They needed to be exposed to an intensity and quality they couldn't find at home if they were to convert from being promising athletes to credible rugby players.

The fact that both arrived in their mid-to-late teens, both played for New Zealand Under-20 and both have won Super Rugby contracts suggests that they are fiercely driven and supremely gifted.

And what's maybe key to realise is that they found New Zealand rather than New Zealand finding them and that may be the key to their success so far.

Holland's and Segner's journeys from European football strongholds to Super Rugby are possibly going to prove a kinder and better way for New Zealand's rugby system to be bolstered by foreign talent.

For decades now there has been a global obsession with and exploitation of Pacific Island athletes which has often been cut-throat and cruel.

Maybe now there is a new market from which New Zealand can draw additional players in a way that is a win for the athlete, a win for the system and a win for Fiji, Samoa and Tonga who gain greater access to their enormous talent pool.