College sport: Aussies swoop for young Kiwi league talent

Micheal Luck will be in town for the Cowboys. Photo / Doug Sherring

Like prospectors in search of gold nuggets, a legion of top representatives from every NRL club will descend on a small corner of Papakura this week.

Warriors' legend Micheal Luck, now the Cowboys football operations manager will be in town and Bulldogs head of recruitment Noel Cleal is also expected to attend, among many other scouts.

They are here to cast an eye over the best young talent at the NZRL National Secondary Schools tournament, a week long football festival now in its third year.

With New Zealand's - and especially Auckland's reputation - as the greatest producer of rugby (either code) talent in the world the Australian interest is understandable. In 2011 Roger Tuivasa-Sheck starred for Otahuhu College; weeks later he was ensconced in Bondi at the Roosters and the rest is history.

"It is a pretty important tournament and we will be out there in force," says Warriors General Manager Dean Bell. "All of our rivals will be in town but we like to think we are one step ahead.

Spotting talent and predicting success is always a tricky task - the highly touted Auckland 1stXV 1A competition produced just one All Black graduate between 2006 and 2012 - but New Zealand has become a goldmine for Australian NRL teams. It puts more pressure on the Warriors to recruit well and the local players that the Auckland franchise have missed to their Australasian rivals - like Tuivasa-Sheck, like Sonny Bill Williams, like Steve Matai - often tend to be highlighted by critics of the club.

"We won't get them all," says Bell of snaring the best young talent. "But that is okay as long as we get most of them. If you think [as the Warriors] you have the right to sign every good kid in New Zealand, you are in dreamland, it's just not possible. Having said that, as the local team and the only NRL franchise here we should get most of them and I think we do."

"Everyone is after the best talent but we like to think we have done our homework and don't leave big decisions until this tournament. However it is a great opportunity to see someone you may have overlooked, or someone has been under the radar."

The increasing prominence of the tournament illustrates the progress the game has made at secondary school level in a few short years. For many of the current Warriors league wasn't an option during their school days.

Manu Vatuvei played rugby (centre or wing) at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate as there was no league option while Simon Mannering didn't switch codes until his late teens. At Mount Albert Grammar School Thomas Leuluai and Matai were more focussed on club league during the weekend, resisting pressure to play rugby.

"It's great to see how far it has come," says Mannering, "and good that kids who are interested in league now have the option."

The week long tournament, held at Bruce Pulman Park, features 16 schools in the elite category and eight in the development section. The usual suspects like St Pauls College and Otahuhu College should feature strongly, while there will be much interest in the progress of MAGS (coached by Steve Price) and the tournament debut of Westlake Boys High School.