School’s poaching of players not sporting
T’S left the best schoolboy competition in the world in disarray’’.
So concluded a RadioNZ report on the refusal, by 10 other Auckland schools, and some beyond Auckland, to play rugby against the St Kentigern College First XV, because that school’s been enticing players from other schools with generous scholarships.
Not just at year 9 (third form), as a number of schools do, but poaching elite senior players from other schools’ first XVs — some, like All Black captain Kieran Reid, for only their last year of school.
Little wonder that St Kentigern often dominates schoolboy rugby (but last week Columba beat it in the girls’ final of the national secondary schools touch competition: perhaps St Kentigern is sexbiased, and doesn’t poach girls).
St Kentigern claims that it doesn’t actively recruit players: the boys’ families apply for scholarships. That when a player, sent by another school to a development camp where a St Kentigern coach was on the staff, then applied for a scholarship to St Kentigern, it was coincidence, not the result of recruitment. Yeah, right! And a rugby commentator reports that representatives of the school, uninvited, approached the mother of a promising year 11 player, at her workplace in Wairoa, to offer the boy full fees at St Kentigern, and the parents flights to Auckland for home games.
St Kentigern is a complex of five schools: a preschool for ages 34; separate boys’ and girls’ schools for years 08 and boys’ and girls’ middle colleges for years 710; and the coeducational senior college for years 1113. They’re independent schools, aimed squarely at the rich — base fees for a boarder in one of the colleges total $37,762 per year, with extra charges for sporting activities and trips, and further curriculum related charges, plus a total of $6325 ($2000 is a bond) payable in oneoff charges before children are enrolled.
That money buys facilities and staff way beyond those of most other schools. One expects independent schools will have desirable staffpupil ratios, but it’s more than that.
Civis attended an independent secondary school in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There was one physical education teacher on the staff. Coaching of sports teams, at all levels (understandably, in a school with a strong boarding component, sport was compulsory, to keep the youngsters occupied) before breakfast, after school and in the weekends, was done by the teachers, as part of their commitment to the school.
St Kentigern Senior College has professional coaches for the multitude of sports available, as well as three fitness trainers, which few schools can match.
That, like the not uncommon practice of offering sport scholarships at year 9 level, detracts from balanced, fair competition, which idealists might, like Civis, think is intrinsic to sport. But poaching outstanding players from other, less privileged schools, for their last year or two at school, is different. It’s a kind of theft, exploiting training and development other schools have provided and resourced.
There are further reasons, too, to be concerned at the practice. It demoralises both sports teams and the social fabric (sport isn’t the prime purpose of schooling) of the schools boys are poached from, and encourages the belief that dollars are more important than loyalty (watch out, NZ Rugby and All
Blacks).
Civis suspects it also demoralises, not other elite players at the host school, but those, not so naturally gifted, who would otherwise reach top teams by determination and hard slog, earning selfconfidence by doing so, and setting an example to others.
Civis’ grandfather, a wing threequarter for Dunedin’s Alhambra
Club in the late 19th century, and then a representative player for a northern province where he studied, reckoned, in later life, that schoolboy rugby was the best form of the game.
Sadly, in some places, it now seems to be as ruled by money, and winning at any cost, as the ‘‘Super HowMany’’ and international competitions.
Has sportsmanship been abandoned?