Author: Insignificant Tick
Subject: School Vrs Club Rugby
Posted: 29 Jul 2013 at 09:18
Apologies for the length of this post but taken from the NZ Herald ..........
"Schoolboy rugby in Auckland has lost any notion of egalitarianism and the world famous 1A competition is now divided along financial lines.
The Herald's investigation into First XV rugby can reveal that five schools - Auckland Grammar, King's College, Mt Albert Grammar, Sacred Heart College and St Kentigern College - are estimated to be spending more than $400,000 collectively on their respective First XVs while the other seven teams in the 1A competition are spending collectively about $50,000.
Experienced educators with knowledge of the Auckland rugby scene say there is now a culture of "have" and "have-not" schools. They say the growing financial divide is a concern for many reasons, notably:
It is indicative of and likely to be fostering a win-at-all-costs culture at the expense of a holistic education.
It is creating too many one-sided contests and doing much to preclude the lower-spending schools from winning the title.
Tell us your 1st XV experience. Email
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It is encouraging the best young players to switch to one of the richer schools where they see their prospects of rep team selection and an eventual professional career as much higher.
King's College spends $70,000 a year on rugby overall and $40,000 specifically on the First XV. Sacred Heart estimates total annual expenditure on its First XV to be $50,000.
Neither Auckland Grammar nor Mt Albert Grammar would divulge their respective budgets but the Herald estimates they will spend in line with Sacred Heart - their funds drawn from school donations and sponsorships.
St Kentigern College, reigning Auckland, New Zealand and world champions and reputed to be the biggest spenders, also refused to divulge their financial commitment.
Sources with good knowledge of the school estimate St Kents will spend $150,000-$200,000 this year - with the figure inflated as the First XV travelled to Japan for the world Sanix championship in April.
Manoj Daji, chief executive of College Sport, the body that runs the 1A competition, says: "I am very concerned at the budget amounts suggested on a number of levels.
"The divide that is emerging is both unhealthy and worrying for the ethos of the competition. Such budgets suggest an overimportance being placed on winning the 1A title and/or keeping a school's place in this competition. Do the curriculum budgets of small departments in schools match these sorts of numbers?
"Already this season there has been 90 and 60-point wins recorded in the 1A competition. Even more worrying is young players believing the only pathway to top level rugby is via a school with a significant rugby budget."
While the greater investment made by the "rich" schools does in most cases provide the boys with access to better facilities, equipment, recovery advice, training aids and nutrition, the real benefit is that it has enabled the "big five" to develop reputations as the best destinations for those pupils who see rugby as a potential career option.
Geoff Moon, director of rugby at Mt Albert Grammar, who also has extensive coaching and teaching experience in South Auckland, says the biggest difference from 10 years ago is that many parents see professional rugby as a realistic career for their children.
"Things have changed a little bit because [good rugby programmes] are something that parents want now," he says. "It's a consequence of the sport going professional - some schools have placed more emphasis on getting sport right and it is more of a priority than it has been in some schools."
That parents across the city are willing to shift their children in search of a better rugby experience is borne out by the fact that there are 38 boys playing in the 1A this year who are listed as new to their respective schools. Of those 38, 22 have shifted to one of the big five rich schools.
There were 47 boys picked for the recent Blues Under-18 development camp: 34 of them came from the five richest schools. When the squad was cut to 25 players after the camp, 20 were from the five richest schools - which supports the perception that kids from a high-profile rugby institution have a better chance of cracking rep teams.
A number of current Blues players prove that it is possible to make it to the professional ranks from one of the less well-resourced schools. Charlie Faumuina, capped by the All Blacks last year, attended Papatoetoe High School; Keven Mealamu was a pupil at Aorere College; and young prop Ofa Tu'ungafasi made the New Zealand Secondary Schools team out of Mangere College.
But former All Black Ant Strachan, who is the high performance manager at the Auckland Rugby Union - largely responsible for determining which First XV players will be offered professional contracts - says that as much as he tries to cast the selection net wide and keep an eye on the 1B and 1C competitions, the well-resourced schools are probably going to develop the bulk of the players who will be in line for higher honours.
The clustering of talent has fed concerns among the educational fraternity that winning the competition is now beyond those seven, lower-spending schools. Since De La Salle, the decile 1 Catholic school from Mangere, won in 2008, the list of 1A winners reads, Mt Albert in 2009 and 2010, followed by St Kents in 2011 and 2012 with those two schools fancied to make the final again this year.
Historically, like all schoolboy competitions, 1A has been subject to natural cycles depending on the relative strength of respective peer groups. But that pattern is being distorted, say some seasoned observers, because of the level of recruitment - particularly of younger pupils.
"The big worry for me is that we have a really good Under-14 team this year," says De La Salle's head of rugby, Nigel Hurst. "But how many of them will be here when they get to Year 11? South Auckland has just become a talent pool for the rich schools."
Northland boys lured south by schools
The battleground for rugby talent is fierce within Auckland - more intense again when it comes to enticing pupils from outside the city, particularly students from Northland.
The Herald understands that in any given year between 30 to 50 boys from Northland will be lured to board at Auckland schools. More than a third of the 100-plus boarders at Mt Albert Grammar are from Northland, while similar numbers are thought to be at Auckland Grammar, and King's, Sacred Heart and St Kents are also believed to house significant volumes of boys from up north.
Northland is recognised as having large numbers of talented kids but no established schoolboy competition of note.
Northland Rugby Union high performance manager, Peter Nock, says that scenario has led to Auckland's leading schools taking an intense interest in the region.
He says mutually beneficial, informal relationships have been struck, where schools strengthen their rugby squads and boys improve their education and sporting prospects.
"For the families it is an opportunity to go to a high-profile school," says Nock. "When you consider that some of the kids up here have to travel an hour to school and back, moving to these sorts of schools in Auckland where they have their own gyms and they are pushed to excel, it's often an easy decision to make."
Nock says he has almost become an intermediary - fielding calls from families eager to relocate their sons and also from a handful of schools.
His own son, Sam, transferred to St Kentigern College on a four-year scholarship after he impressed playing for Northland's Roller Mills team. Fellow Northlander Dillon Wihongi was also offered a scholarship by St Kents and Nock says that following the recent Blues Schools camp, Shelford Murray, of Kaitaia College, is now fielding several offers to transfer to Auckland.
The Herald spoke to several sources who had no doubt the majority of the boys transferring from Northland were doing so for legitimate reasons - the shift would be beneficial for all aspects of their eduction. But they felt the 1A competition was being further skewed in favour of wealthier schools who had the capacity to attract the best players from in and out of Auckland.
"There is no doubt that the schools with boarding facilities have the single biggest advantage," says Dave Syms, former Auckland Grammar teacher, First XV coach and headmaster at Palmerston North Boys' High School and now operations manager at the Auckland Rugby Union. "
And also........
Sunday Insight: Schoolboy rugby's dirty secret
By Gregor Paul
5:30 AM Sunday Jul 28, 2013 ✩Save
New Zealand's top rugby schools are luring talented young players with the promise of riches and stardom. But in a major Herald series beginning today, we reveal a darker take of boys left on the scrapheap with no future in rugby and no education.
There is comfort to be found in routine for Mt Albert Grammar School First XV captain Josh Goodhue as he tries to deal with the nerves and excitement that come on Saturdays.
He knows that he and his team-mates must deliver. He has to have faith that the hours of training - four organised team sessions a week plus individual strength and conditioning work - are going to see his team emerge successful through the 70 minutes. He has to believe the video analysis, the detailed team meetings and tactical planning are going to be the difference. Victories are hard to come by in Auckland's ferociously competitive 1A competition.
Routine is everything for Goodhue - during the week, through Friday night, right up until kick-off, he's learned that getting the preparation right is vital. Now a Year 13, the big lock from Kawakawa has been going through this since he arrived at the MAGS boarding house as a wide-eyed Year 11 (what used to be called fifth form). He, his twin brother Jack and six other boarders are part of a First XV that is fancied to make the final of this year's competition.
"We usually do a stretching session the night before as well," says Goodhue. "We talk a bit about the game tomorrow.
"We wake up around nine o'clock just before the [junior] rugby starts up here and most of us will come up and watch a couple of the lower grades and then just chill.
"Ever since I started in Year 11, it has been hard every week. Any team can beat another on the day."
There are hundreds of boys much like Goodhue all across Auckland - and probably thousands more who want to be where he is. The prestige, the glory, the peer adulation - First XV members are granted almost heroic status.
That's how it has been for an age, but the landscape has changed dramatically in the past few years. What was once a game is now a potential career. Where once parents focused on a school's academic performance, many now deem the quality of the First XV and respective rugby programme more important. Schools used to operate on specific rugby budgets that were enough to buy some playing kit, pay for the odd team bus and a post-match feed. Now some schools allocate $50,000 just for their First XV - money that pays for video cameras, advanced software programmes, training camps, training aids, scrum machines and specialist coaching.
Simon Porter, one of the country's leading player agents, warns First XV players who are lucky enough to be awarded professional contracts to expect their first year out of school to be a bit of a let-down. "They won't train together as much and in some cases the facilities won't be as good."
Auckland's most prestigious schools say academia is front and centre - yet an almost frightening array of evidence says success on the rugby field is all that matters.
Often described as the best schoolboy competition in the world, the Auckland 1A championship has many teachers concerned that it has reached the stage where it is a corrosive and distorting influence on educational philosophies.
Principals, teachers, old boy networks, parents and live pay-per-view broadcasts are complicit in inflating the importance of rugby success - of placing First XV on an almost ludicrously high pedestal and endorsing a culture that promotes and celebrates rugby above all else.
The 12 teams in the 1A competition are estimated to spend close to $500,000 on their respective First XVs, drawn from school funding, sponsorships and old-boy networks. Half the teams in the competition offer specific rugby scholarships. Across the 12 squads, 38 boys are listed as new to their respective school in the past two years. Sacred Heart alone has seven of those boys listed in its First XV squad. Auckland Grammar, Mt Albert Grammar, St Kentigern and Kelston Boys' High School each have four.
Some schools have either a First XV coach or director of rugby who is not a registered teacher. The Herald on Sunday understands that some schools are paying up to $80,000 for these roles. St Kentigern College, the defending Auckland, national and world champion, has a dedicated conditioning coach. Several schools have set up junior academies where kids are taught rugby in class time.
An increasing number of experienced educators are troubled by what they have seen in recent years. The 1A competition used to form a component of a holistic education. It was an avenue outside the classroom to foster leadership, enterprise, courage and team-work.
The list of winners over the years suggests investment in rugby was largely equitable: a lower decile school such as De La Salle College in Mangere was just as capable of being champion - as in 2003 and 2008 - as the fee-paying King's College whose team won in 2005.
Now, schools such as St Kent's, King's College and Sacred Heart have reputations as "ambitious" rugby schools. More than a third of the 38 boys who have switched schools in the past two years have washed up at these three colleges.
"Rugby is a high-profile sport and can put a school on the map," says Auckland Grammar headmaster Tim O'Connor. "Each school will make their own decisions about their approach. I think parents and boys make choices about the schools they want to attend for a variety of reasons. And sport, particularly rugby, is the number one reason. It's not the right approach to education and I think we always have to remember that the whole reason for our existence is to educate people - to help them learn things."
Rugby has become a legitimate career option for young men. It's not just rugby either - Australia's NRL and AFL clubs have also come to view the 1A competition as arguably the world's richest source of football talent.
In any given year, between 20 and 40 boys in the 1A competition will be offered some kind of professional contract. These range from glorified pocket money deals in an ITM Cup provincial academy to $20,000 to $80,000 with an Australian NRL club.
For those who are able to make it in the cut-throat world of professional football codes, the rewards are immense - and for many families the perceived strength and importance of a school's rugby programme is an important factor in determining where their child will be educated.
All 12 schools accept that being a professional rugby player is a legitimate option, but where they differ is in their level of encouragement for boys to go down that path. That is, how hard are members of the First XV pushed in the classroom?
Dale Burden, the headmaster at Mt Albert Grammar School, says: "We don't want to win with anything other than kids who have good values and are well-rounded people. I am more interested in the process than the outcome.
"Academics is the most important thing. When the First XV is picked it has to be circulated to all the deans to make sure everyone can play - that they have been trying their best and that they have been good people. We don't measure success by our First XV results but by the level of contribution people leaving here can make to society."
He says: "Many of the First XV overachieved academically. With some boys you need a hook and that is probably more true of Pasifika boys. But we are not going to be a production line to any age-grade national teams."
Some schools, however, are intensely cynical about the conduct of other schools. Significant numbers of pupils at lower decile schools, particularly those in South Auckland such as Tangaroa College, De La Salle and Otahuhu College, have been offered the chance to move.
The pupils are sold the opportunity of a "better education".
But Tangaroa principal Ngaire Ashmore is not convinced the opportunities are all they seem. "We continue to have up-and-coming rugby players in our school offered scholarships to leave us and attend the so-called 'long-established rugby schools' in the 1A rugby competition, even as recent as this term.
"Is this about providing educational opportunities for students and their future or is it about securing rugby talent to ensure the continued success of the First XV programmes in these 'long-established rugby schools', for their old boy networks, at whatever the cost?"
At Otahuhu College, deputy principal Toe Pune feels the same. To his mind, changing schools carries a risk around the academic experience as well as the child's social wellbeing, self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of worth. Pune doesn't advise any family against a shift, but he encourages them to talk it over with him before they commit.
"We go through the scenarios and ask the questions: is he going to play much or be sitting on the bench? And what about in the classroom? Will he be well-supported? Will they speak his language, because we can do that.
"Not every child is right for that type of education. So we say to the parents, let's push the rugby or the rugby league but let's also keep pushing the education, too."
Some who shift thrive in their new environments. But the Herald on Sunday, in conducting this investigation, was told many stories of boys who did not.
The worst example was of a boy who left De La Salle in 2006 for a place at St Kentigern College and returned two years later with 58 credits - not even achieving NCEA.
"He returned to De La Salle with not enough credits for Level 1," says Nigel Hurst, head of rugby at De La Salle. "These boys who they are offering a 'better' education to just so happen to all be great athletes."
It's not uncommon for boys to give up their scholarships and return to their original school having made, at best, moderate academic advancement, if any at all.
But the head of St Kentigern College, Steve Cole, claims things are changing for the better. "Since I became Head of College in 2009 the students who are involved in sport, including rugby at St Kentigern, have records of academic achievement," he says. "It is an important part of being at St Kentigern."
Recruitment is the corrosive element in schools rugby: suspicion is rife about the legality and ethics, yet so rarely is wrongdoing proved.
Only twice in recent years has College Sport, the body that manages the competition, found bona fide evidence of poaching. One case was in 2010 when a member of staff at St Kentigern College was adjudged to have been in contact with one of his former pupils at Aorere College. The other was when Mt Albert Grammar tried to lure a boy from Avondale College.
Those entrenched in the system say that the reason more cases haven't come to light is more to do with the difficulty of proving wrongdoing rather than it is not happening.
That figure of 38 new boys in the respective 12 squads is even more telling when further analysed. Bram Egli was listed as new to King's College last year and was selected in the New Zealand Barbarians Schools team, which was effectively a national side for Year 12 boys. His team-mate Sinclair Dominikovich-Murray was also listed as new to King's and he made the New Zealand Secondary Schools side, as did Broc Hooper, who was listed as new to St Kentigern College.
Many of the new arrivals happen to play in positions where a school was obviously weak the year before and that creates the belief that there is obvious succession planning.
The battleground isn't so much at the established level - there are strict stand-down rules for boys who have already played First XV elsewhere. It is more in the Year 9 and Year 10 age groups.
Again, there are strict rules about schools enticing boys to switch, but those working in the system say it's relatively easy to work around those rules. Ultimately, the trick is to somehow plant the seed of shifting in the minds of the pupils. If the boy or his family make the approach, then everyone has a clear conscience.
"We provide the whole package and we are approached all the time," says King's College headmaster Bradley Fenner. "We see great kids every year but unfortunately can't make them all offers. We have a lot of people who talk to us after they have talked to other people - former Collegians and parents, and so on. We don't have a network of scouts but it is interesting how conversations take place.
"There is a pretty rigorous set of rules about poaching. We operate within those rules."
Policing this area is next to impossible. Many of the boys are in age-grade representative teams, coached by teachers at rival schools. Teachers move around for legitimate reasons and therefore have established relationships with boys at their former schools. Boys from different schools become friends and hear about the grass being greener.
Private schools have scholarships and bequests to help facilitate boys switching; Catholic schools have no catchment zones and a limited number of places for boys of a different faith; some of the public schools have boarding houses and limited places available on ballot.
"Last year, we had 10 boys on ballot - sons of former old boys and teachers so we can maintain the culture of the school," says Auckland Grammar's Tim O'Connor. "I'm sure the public think we line up all the best sportsmen and take them but it doesn't work like that."
Every school protests its innocence, yet one source told a story of a boy changing schools after his family shifted into a new zone. When he came to give the boy a lift home after a practice, he learned the family hadn't moved at all. There are many stories of boys boarding at Central Auckland schools despite their families living in Central Auckland.
At Mt Albert Grammar, Burden says: "We don't have dedicated talent scouts having a look for players. But I would be lying if I said our development coaches don't have a look at intermediate schools that feed into us. A lot of that is about strengthening relationships with kids who will be coming here anyway."
His first XV captain, Josh Goodhue, is unabashed in admitting why he moved. "The reason I came to Auckland was for the standard of rugby," Josh says. "It's probably the best First XV competition in the world and just being able to play in it is so good for my rugby."
Rugby continues to be culturally defining in New Zealand. For many young men, their best experiences of the sport will happen at school. The 1A competition is especially prestigious - the envy of the world because it fosters strong values and provides positive experiences as part of a wider education.
Many of the games are televised on Sky; scouts from professional teams will be on the sidelines; crowds can be bigger than those at ITM Cup games; school assemblies on Monday mornings can be memorable when the First XV wins.
But as Nigel Hurst, head of rugby at De La Salle College, says: "Having been involved in education for more than 30 years I wonder whether other people who are influential, such as principals, are putting the interests of themselves and the reputation of their school before the kids. The kids have to come first - they are the reason we have schools, to educate them and help them become better people."
- Additional reporting Campbell Burnes
Eligibility rules
• Teams can register up to 28 players who are under 18 on January 1 of any given year - a maximum of six can be new to school in the past two years.
• Any player who has represented another First XV must observe a stand-down of six consecutive games.
• Teams with four or fewer new squad members can apply for an exemption allowing them to field two players aged 18 or over at January 1 , so long as they are neither new to the school nor fee-paying international students.
- Herald on Sunday
Edited by Insignificant Tick - 9 hours 40 minutes ago at 09:20