Harlequins help players to stay in the game
Club’s first under-19 team gives development chances to players, coaches, writes Aaron Goile
They have cleared the pathway for many an aspiring player over the years, and now the New Zealand Harlequins Rugby Club have furthered their commitment to that, this year introducing an under-19 team for the first time.
Since the club’s inception in 1938, their philosophy has been about maintaining friendships through rugby, playing festival matches and keeping promising juniors involved in the game, giving them an opportunity to reach higher honours.
An under-17 programme was started in the early 1990s, and looked at capturing those who were not in Waikato age-group teams or playing at top-line 1st XV level, all in a bid to make Waikato rugby stronger in the long run. Clear cases in point are Bruce Reihana, Mark van Gisbergen, Isaac Boss and Regan King, who will all look back on the Harlequins system as a godsend.
Current Waikato lock David Morgan is another who progressed with the help of Harlequins, while his former locking partner – St Paul’s Collegiate School old boy Tom Franklin – in 2011 became the club’s 100th player to reach first-class level, plying his trade for Otago.
The St Paul’s school connection is noteworthy in that it is a big supporter of Harlequins, hosting 46 under-17 players for an annual three-day camp. An average of two to three players per camp go on to play professional rugby.
‘‘A lot of these guys are 16 or 17, and are little fellas, and they get missed out, but all of a sudden, when they get a bit older, they develop, they get bigger,’’ Harlequins president Graham Jefferis said. ‘‘So those boys, if they didn’t come through our system, they’d be lost to rugby forever.’’
The under-17 age group is targeted, as it’s typically the players’ last year at school before they head off for tertiary study, though now Harlequins have offered an extension of that with the under-19s. That team played their first game on Saturday – beating Counties Manukau Under-18s 47-5 at home – and over the next three weekends they will take on Counties, Bay of Plenty and Waikato in the round-robin section of the new national under-19 tournament.
‘‘This is a second string to Waikato again, but what it does is it gives them a feeder,’’ Jefferis said. ‘‘We’re giving these guys rugby which they wouldn’t have, their season’s finished.
‘‘And already, since we had our trials, three boys out of our squad have moved up to the A squad anyway.’’
Jefferis noted it also gave coaches and managers a chance to develop as well.
The Harlequins club has about 300 members, and is based at Waikato Stadium, where they have this year opened their new clubrooms on level three of the Brian Perry Stand.
It has a modern look, with nice touches of nostalgia around the walls. Along with the bar, there is now a cafe in the corner serving tea and coffee and biscuits and cakes, popular on game day with the older members, who can be found sitting around and talking well after fulltime. A new initiative has the club inviting former members’ widows to matches at the stadium, with their names also inscribed on the state-of-theart honours board, where there is a column for honorary lady members.
Later this month the club will hold its annual breakfast fundraiser, with about two thirds of the money raised going towards the camp at St Paul’s.
Harlequins steer clear of funding from gaming machines, as they see it ‘‘almost as double-dipping’’, according to the club’s house manager Bernie Murphy.
‘‘The biggest thing for us is I think we’re a bunch of older guys who are good at raising money. We have a format that works very, very well, and we choose to give it away – and that’s why we get support,’’ Murphy said.
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