With first XV rugby becoming a pathway into professional sport in New Zealand, some schools are replicating high-performance environments through in-class rugby academies.
Rugby programmes such as those at Westlake Boys’ High School and Nelson College are two examples of schools that are bearing the fruit of including academies in their curriculum, fuelling year-on-year individual and team success.
Nelson’s academy houses a Year 10 and a Year 12/13 class, with the former running for a term and the latter a full year. Both have four in-school sessions a week, which cover “all aspects of rugby”, according to director of rugby Mark Cochrane, spanning skill development, fitness and strategy on-field to video analysis and nutrition off it.
“Boys are now going from essentially what is a hobby in a game to actually preparing themselves to go into academies and professional rugby if they’re good enough,” Cochrane said.
Nelson’s First XV coach Greg Foe said he’s “pretty fortunate” the school has an academy of this magnitude, as it provides more coaching time for the fundamental skills.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays is not enough to be able to do that,” Foe said.
“There’s definitely a need for it. We’re not just doing this because first XV is the main goal ... it’s [about] growing the whole rugby programme.”
The senior class, Cochrane said, gets put through coaching courses so boys can attain National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) credits, as he added “there’s always an academic component to their rugby development”.
Westlake’s academy runs across Years 9-11 and is run by former Kiwis captain and New Zealand rugby league legend Hugh McGahan.
The academy caters exclusively for rugby union players, with McGahan saying from a player-safety perspective, the school doesn’t allow boys to play both league and union, but “doesn’t care” which one they choose.
The academy process begins before boys have even set foot on Westlake’s grounds, as McGahan goes through a meticulous trial process, not only assessing skill level but character, and even going to schools to ask “what type of people they are”.
From there, all year levels have two field sessions in class time a week, with another one in the gym working on strength and conditioning. The senior class is put through refereeing and coaching classes, with many having two extra gym sessions thanks to being part of the First XV.
McGahan said the academy has helped bridge the gap between age-grade rugby and the First XV environment and as a result is looking to create classes for Year 12 and Year 13 students.
He also referred to his overall goal with the academy: to create a “snapshot” for their boys in what it’s like to be a professional.
“If you want to be that, this is what is required from you, plus more. You’re going to get paid from those people, they’re going to expect a lot more from you,” he said.
Alongside the successes of these academies, however, remain schools who stand strong against incorporating in-class sessions purely designed for rugby.
Kings College director of sport Kerry Baker said a Year 10 athletic performance class is the extent of in-class sport extension, which spans across multiple codes.
“We’re different from other schools ... I’m a big advocate of guys not specialising if they can help it,” Baker said.
He pointed to how he can see “guys getting burnt out” even within Kings’ rugby set-up. Baker says he wants to prolong kids’ love of the game past their high school careers.
“If they lose it, that’s another population age group that that’s gone from the game,” he said.
“[It’s] another generation that will just go ‘nah don’t enjoy it, don’t want to do it, not going to do it’.”
He said Kings’ head of athletic development monitors dual coders in terms of their workload, and Baker himself meets with the specialist sport heads to make sure no one’s “butting heads over kids”.
The over-professionalism of schoolboy rugby has been a hot talking point this year and while many are quick to blame the schools, McGahan said young players making professional debuts at 17 or 18 “wouldn’t be happening” without environments like rugby academies.
“The other schools, if they don’t want to invest in it, that doesn’t mean what we’re doing is bad,” he said.
Like McGahan, Foe said he incorporates professional aspects to the academy to aid the transition from high school to high-performance environments.
He added that while some may perceive the academy as promoting “elitism”, it helps not only accommodate all levels of rugby ambition, but keeps boys in school, funnelling them into trades and further study post-secondary school.
“The programme sells itself ... [it] creates a little bit of excitement, fire and desire to want to be in the First XV. It’s important from a coaching and management point of view that we accommodate to whatever the needs are.”
A byproduct of these academies, Foe added, is the opportunity created in other codes, exemplified by Nelson College old boy Harry Inch’s move to the Warriors.
“That’s a product of the programme that we’ve created and the things we’re doing. We’re not going to do it half-arsed, we’re going to go all in.”