You heard of John Tamaheri Westie Stylz? He's a former Labour party MP and current talk show host on Radio Live and lawyer. You should ring in one day and ask him how hard secondardy schools make it for league to get a foot hold into high schools. He reckons it was easier getting votted into parliment.
NU, I teach at one and know what it took to set one up.
Basically league needs to get more coaches and managers approaching schools. Times are changing and I know many principals couldn't give a damn about league or rugby so its just a matter of getting enough players, coaches and managers. There are of course the hardout rugby schools who seem to think of their first XV as the phallic object of their school but even most of them could have their arm twisted in this day and age. The schools that shoudl be targetted are those smaller to medium schools and go from there.
The following schools in Auckland have at least one league team: Rutherford, Western Springs, Green Bay, Massey, Waitakere, St Pauls, Tamaki, Avondale, Manurewa, Southern Cross, Otahuhu, James Cook, Sir Edmund Hillary, Aorere, Mangere, Mt Roskill, Hato Petera, One Tree Hill.
Conspicuous by their absence are Mt Albert Grammar, Auckland Grammar, Kelston Boys, Kings, Sacred Heart, De La Salle, St Kents and St Peters from Auckland and basically every single NH school minus Massey and Hato Petera, so the likes of Rangitoto, Takapuna, Westlake, Orewa, Long Bay, Whangaparoao, Birkenhead, Glenfield, Rosmini.... Interestingly enough though several of those sides fielded teams at the NH schools tourny on Thursday and most included many players from their first XV with Westlake fielding a strong side that took it out.
But if we could get one or two more out of them to get a side up and running then the rest would probably be ripe for the picking.
I think they have to seriously consider going to a weekend setup though. The clubs would suffer but then at least guys would be leaving high school having stayed with league rather than shifting into rugby while there and leaving high school as 'rugby players'. One other thing that needs to be worked on in the next couple of years is getting the under 15 comp up to 13 players instead of the current 9. The junior comp is the really important one. That way schools will have league players coming through right from year 9 and they won't be worried about first XV players making the switch because they never would have been rugby players in the first place.
