Looking local to enjoy great rugby
A Saturday afternoon watching live rugby is a rare occurrence these days with late-night kick offs for television.
But there’s some great footy to be watched locally if you know where to look, and it needn’t cost an arm and a leg and a night out at the stadium to see it.
We are talking about 1st XV college rugby.
This is the purest version of the game.
There are no transfer fees, or overgrown player egos, just incredibly talented local kids, playing for the love of the game and their college emblems.
The Wellington premiership brings the best of the best colleges to battle each week, and is the breeding ground for future Hurricanes like Salesi Rayasi the 1.95m 105 kg winger who broke through to the bigtime this season.
Ka¯ piti is fortunate to have been represented in the tournament for the last three seasons via Ka¯ piti College 1st XV.
They have a brave group of young players, their bare bones team often competes against colleges with huge depth, some having 13 teams.
It has been an incredibly successful season for the
Ka¯ piti College 1st XV who started the season with a squad of just 20 players.
At one stage there were question marks about whether they would survive the early grading games.
They did, and Ka¯ piti’s most recent default win over Aotea won them seventh place finishers in the competition overall, ended the season winning more games than Wellington, Aotea, Wairarapa, St. Bernard’s and HIBS.
The players have demonstrated an incredible amount of courage and skill through their campaign, they have a relatively young and inexperienced forward pack who didn't take a backward step, and a sublime backline who really shone in terms of their need to play a wide entertaining game-plan against frequently larger opponents.
The whole team’s attitude towards defence has been a high point.
They were legendary in games against Upper Hutt, Wairarapa, and Wellington and won them hearts from the sideline. It would be unfair to single one of them out.
This is looking really good for the Horowhenua Ka¯ piti U16 and U18 teams this year due to the level of the players available for selection in these teams.