Rubgy: Cut-throat competition on school fields

By GREG DIXON

The final whistle almost comes too soon. In the dappled light of a winter's Saturday afternoon, two of Auckland school rugby's oldest rivals have more than played the game for the thousand plus spectators massed on the fields of Auckland Grammar School.

Haka have punished the air. Grammar's Tibb House boarders have chanted and cheered like some boisterous Greek chorus. The game has been fast, clean, satisfying.

If the final score favours the Grammar first XV by 26 over its opponent Mt Albert Grammar's 7, it has made no difference to the real outcome of their first clash of the new century.

There's been a perfection about the game, a simplicity, a timelessness.

And as two sides peeled off the field and away from the draughty nor'wester for warm showers in the changing rooms they knew they'd done their schools proud. Rugby, indeed, was the winner on the day.

All of which might have left an unwary spectator with the feeling that, for schoolboy rugby, things are as they have always been, that the three pillars of school rugby - passion, tradition and fair play - remain untouched and unchallenged.

Well, that unwary spectator might have to look again.

Just a few Saturdays before on a paddock five minutes walk from Grammar's field of victory, another school rugby game offered quite another impression of Auckland school rugby's premier competition.

As the final whistle blew on that game - a close home win by Auckland premier leaders St Peter's over private boys' school St Kentigern - the St Kentigern head, the Rev David Williams, rushed onto the field and mabe a beeline for referee Steve O'Leary.

According to O'Leary's report to the Auckland Referees Association, Williams accused him of ending the game early. O'Leary told him he was wrong.

"The principal refused to acknowledge this," O'Leary said in his report, "and continued to rant and rave up and down the sideline, claiming 'we were robbed.'"

Williams later denied the claim, saying he spoke to the referee in a "controlled and restrained manner" and has witnesses who can verifiy that.

Then, a week or so later, during a showpiece match between Hamilton and Cambridge boys' high schools in Hamilton, fighting on the field and abuse from the sideline saw the game end early and schoolboy rugby's reputation once more kicked into touch.

What is more, what's happening on the field is not necessarily staying on the field.

Away from the sometimes hot, ugly war of the match, a cold war is being fought in the back rooms of school rugby.

There are rumours of recruiting and poaching players by some schools in the premier league, and allegations of scholarships offered for rugby services rendered.

There's talk of strong teams built on imports from weak teams, of a distorted competition. There are fears for the game and a belief that an end of days for Auckland A-grade school competition may be nigh.

These whispers became a roar at the annual general meeting of the Auckland Secondary Schools Heads Association in March.

"Concerns of alleged poaching of students is generating bad feeling among schools," Onehunga High School principal Chris Saunders, then the sporting collective's president, told fellow heads.

"And, unfortunately, the bylaws which were written to address this problem have recently been called into use. I doubt however whether bylaws will provide the answer.

"It is more a matter of ethical behaviour among principals. It is clear that some schools are breaching ethnical standards and in the interests of their own reputation jeopardising effective working relationships between schools. Seldom in these cases is the individual student the primary consideration."

The rot, Saunders thundered, most be stopped.

"There has certainly been a change in attitude and approach and it's pretty visible too," says the long-time, but now retired, head of Auckland Grammar, John Graham.

Secondary schools have become far more competitive in seeking students and a successful first XV rugby team that gets publicity - rightly or wrongly - is seen as good for the school, he says.

"That in my view has lead to a highly competitive streak among some principals and some schools to ensure that they get a competitive team [on the field].

"It has changed the ethics of schoolboy sport. In my view, it should be a homegrown talent thing in every school."

Others sports and other regions also face this dilemma, but it is, most agree, Auckland schoolboy rugby that has the biggest challenges.

The question then, is what's gone wrong? What has happened to turn passion, tradition and fair play into cut-throat competition? And is the first XV competition truly rotting?

The answers, rather unsurprisingly, depend on who's holding the ball.

Rob Boston, executive sports director for the heads association's public face, College Sport, agrees that schools are now more than a little concerned with marketing themselves to the public, and that is the fault of the decade- old recasting of education into a thing called Tomorrow's Schools.

It's basic philosophy saw schools move from being schools to schools being rivals in a marketplace competing for students - making a school's sporting success, as well as its academic record, a sandwich board for drumming up the next intake of customers.

Boston wonders whether it is that that has made the premier grade competition too fierce.

"I'm not going to say too competitive, but I think it might be becoming too intense ... I'm not going to say they're cheating or bending the rules, just that they are wanting to do well for the good of the school rather than the benefit of the kids playing the sport."

But while recruiting and poaching of senior secondary school players was common in the past, the tide has now turned, he says.

Anti-recruiting bylaws drafted and added to the heads association's rules of conduct in 1997 forbid formal or informal approaches to students or inducements to school swapping and come with stiff penalties, including being dumped from the competition. The changes have slowly been taking effect, particularly since March.

It was about sthen that James Cook High School complained to the heads association that St Kentigern had lured one of its First XV players.

Lawyers were called in, mediation took place, and a happy-ever-after - though confidential - resolution reached.

All Boston will say about the case is that the pupil is now at St Kentigern. It was, however, the first formal kick for goal for the anti-recruiting rules.

"It had to be tested and it was tested," Boston says. "and I think that sent ripples throughout the rugby world.

"What we're trying to do is get the principals to talk to each other, so that if a principal at a boys' school suddenly finds out that Mr and Mrs Brown and their Auckland secondary representative son have just turned up on their doorstep, out of courtesy that principal rings that boy's existing school principal and says, 'Do you know this boy has turned up on my doorstep looking to enrol?'

"That is starting to happen now. There are several instances where it has happened and it works well."

Saunders, who is also chair of the Secondary Schools Sports Council, is far from convinced. Some might think recruiting is mere rumour, but he says it happening and happening in a "big way."

The result is that of the 13 teams in Auckland's premier 1A competition fewer than half those teams - including Auckland Grammar, Mt Albert Grammar, Kings, St Kentigern, Scared Heart and Kelston - have a chance of making it into the top three in any given year.

"The schools that indulge in this practice in their own self-interest in terms of their school are damaging the sport as a whole," Saunders says, "because they force a concentration of talent into fewer and fewer schools. So what might have been a very even competition 10 or 15 years ago is now getting to the stage where I believe it is only a matter of time before we might just have a handful of schools who can compete at the highest level."

Other schools, he predicts, may give away rugby programmes altogether because they cannot compete or they grow tired of spending money and time developing players who later leave to play senior rugby for other schools.

Saunders is not alone in his stormy forecast. St Peter's College head of rugby Peter Watt is equally gloomy about the future of Auckland's first XV competition - despite his team holding its place at the top of the table with a decisive 28-8 win over Kings last weekend.

His school has never poached or recruited, he says, but he estimates that three St Peter's players were lured to other schools in the past four years.

That damaged the team, but it also damaged school boy rugby.

"I am saddened by the prospect that effectively we will lose the game.

The worst scenario is that we end up like the American college scene where you have one team of whatever sport you're playing and you buy in players and you have the dancing-girls on the sideline."St Peter's College head of rugby Peter Watt St Kentigern, too, is concerned. Deputy principal and head of rugby Neil Richie also believes the A-grade is more competitive but with talent concentrated in certain schools.

However, he says, it is players shopping around schools for a good rugby deal - such as better exposure for a possible professional career or rugby programmes that include overseas trips - rather than recruiting that leads to any imbalance.

In any case the more intense competition between the top schools means training and coaching, and the kids are more sophisticated than they have ever been.

"Some people have said that there are actually negative spin-offs to all this, that what is happening is that in adolescent age groups, maybe 16 through to 18, unless they're big and strong they can't compete at first XV level. They're saying that kids who develop physically a lot later are actually just giving away the game and so they're being lost from the game.

"A number of quite prominent people are starting to say that. Would an Andrew Mehrtens have been produced by the Auckland first XV competition?

"It's been become more based on physical confrontation and the style of play has changed. Perhaps less ball movement. Even the language has changed - they talk about 'hits' and 'shots.' I don't know if that's good for the game."

Richie puts the blame for all that firmly at the boots of the media and gladiatorial, televised sport like Australian rugby league.

He believe that the gladitorial aspect has produced "the bloodcurdling screaming from the sideline" that wasn't there five to 10 years ago.

Saunders, however, believes sideline behaviour is no better or worse now than it's ever been. "You get the odd outburst," he says, "but we've always had that."

Graham Dalton, the owner, publisher and editor of the nationwide youth magazine Sports Action, reckons there's another reason for the increasing gladiatorial nature of school rugby.

He believes the increasing domination by Pacific Island players is the sea- change in the Auckland rugby scene, in particular the premier highschool grade. That has meant big players are a must for a successful team which means that for predominantly Pakeha schools, importing - sometimes through full or partial scholarships - is the only way to be competitive.

"Your can't help it if you're Polynesian, you're 17, six foot five, and 110kg. That is just the way it is. The problem is not caused by being Polynesian - or Chinese or European. The problem is the administrators stacking these teams with absolute giants.

"Now while size is important when you're 17 or 18, when everyone physically develops and you've been reliant on just size rather than skill - which is exactly what we're seeing within the All Blacks - and you come against someone who is a similar size and they've developed their skills, you ain't going to win."

Williams believes all rugby schools have become involved in the escalating situation.

"That's easy to identify but it's much harder to say, 'Well, how are we going to address it?" I think it will change. That's probably all I can say."

What others have to say is this: that weight and age restrictions - to prevent players coming back as 19 and sometimes 20-year-olds - maybe the only way to return the competition to what it once was.

Some hope Labour's education minister Trevor Mallard's proposed balloting system for selecting out-of-zone students - which would attempt to stop rich schools picking and choosing top students from poorer schools - will sort out the problem of recruiting.

Others dismiss the plan because it would only apply to state schools and not to private schools.

The only way to fix the issue could be the Microsoft solution: to split the problem up.

Says Dalton: "What I think is likely to happen within two years - and there is talk about it now - is there being a super league basically, where rather than having the three Auckland regions [North Harbour, Auckland and Counties-Manukau] split you can call them one region and you can pick, perhaps, your top eight teams, pull them out and let them fight it out.

"Then you have a grade under that that is 80kg and has an age limit on, so you don't have these giant kids that are going back for two and three years in the 7th form."