The Front Page: Has schoolboy rugby in NZ got out of control?

A fight broke out at this year's annual First XV rugby grudge match between Christchurch Boys’ High School and Christ’s College. Photo / George Heard

Abuse from the sidelines. Media blackouts. Legal battles to get players on the pitch.

This is the level of drama you’d expect from professional sport on an international - or at least club - level, but these are headlines associated with high school rugby over the last year.

NZ Herald editor at large Shayne Currie has been reporting on schoolboy rugby since the late 1980s and recently joined The Front Page to discuss whether we’re simply putting too much pressure on these young players in their formative years.

Currie says the level of interest and focus on schoolboy rugby in 2023 is nothing new.

“I remember when I was first studying journalism, I went to Tauranga Boys’ College and covered my first XV as a reporter,” recalls Currie.

“Even back then, there were heaps of kids on the sideline. There’s a fervour about schoolboy rugby in New Zealand that doesn’t necessarily apply to a lot of other sports. We’re not quite at the American level, where you have college football stadiums double the size of Eden Park, but there is an old boy fraternity that exists and they’ve very passionate.”

That passion does sometimes spill over, as was recently observed in Christchurch, where a schoolboy match was marred by allegations of sideline fights and abuse.

“At that game, there were a lot of homophobic slurs and grubby comments thrown at players on the opposition team,” says Currie.

“The schools down there have put in breath testing at the games, to breath test spectators before they go in... The players themselves fought competitively and fairly, but it was unfortunately just the sideline behaviour that let people down.”

But this isn’t the only issue that has recently made headlines in respect of the game at the schoolboy level.

Currie also recently reported on the high-profile legal action of a school attempting to secure the right of a player to join the First XV.

And there’s also a long shadow growing over the game as new research the enormous risk of long-term injury that comes from playing rugby.

• So are our schools doing enough to keep kids safe?
• Has schoolboy rugby gone too far?
• Should media bans on schoolboy games be lifted?
• And what needs to be done to keep kids safe from injury?

Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to hear more from Currie on this issue.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. It is presented by Damien Venuto, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in business reporting who joined the Herald in 2017.

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.