Rugby: Dominant OBHS denies poaching best players

OBHS rugby has much to celebrate.
OBHS rugby has much to celebrate.
Otago Boys' High School has fashioned a dominant and unbeaten record in First XV rugby this year.

But has it simply cherry-picked the best players from all the other teams?

Accusations of player poaching and recruitment have been flying all year.

Otago Boys' coach Ryan Martin is adamant: he does not contact players to get them to come to the school.

"I'm not allowed to. If we were advertising scholarships in the paper, then we could, but we don't do that," he said.

"People will ring me from the end of the season and ask about what we can offer. But we were investigated by the Otago Secondary Schools Sports Association at the start of the year and we were cleared."

The First XV has 12 players, in a squad of 22, who played in year nine rugby teams in 2008 at Otago Boys' High School.

"Sure, we have picked up a few boys, but they have all come on their own accord. They want to further their rugby career and make their own decisions.

"The reality is they will come here. I was at Dunstan for a year and then came down here and part of that was to benefit my rugby. Here I was up against 10-12 halfbacks, so I had to improve."

Otago Boys' has five players who are new to the school in the past year but Martin said some of those were players who moved to the school for reasons other than rugby.

It had been like that for years, he said, pointing to the likes of Filipo Levi moving from Logan Park High School to Otago Boys' in the 1990s.

Poaching is a hot topic in school sport, and undoubtedly envy comes into it, with Otago Boys' having such a great year.

First XV centre Sio Tomkinson played at Kavanagh College last year before turning up at Otago Boys' this season.

Martin said Sio's father approached him about moving schools last year. He showed him the school and the family decided to switch.

"You look at Sio now. He has had two television games and is playing with players who are better than him, and he has improved. If he had stayed at Kavanagh, would he have done that?"

Kavanagh College First XV coach Ant Harris said Sio left of his own accord but felt there were no winners if Otago Boys' had a super-power team.

"I can't see, in the bigger picture, who benefits when a team like Otago Boys' is winning by 100 points and the other teams are losing key guys to build a super team," Harris said.

"If you are an ambitious player, I can see why you would go there, but I can't see what good it does for the competition."

John McGlashan College First XV coach Mike Idour said Otago Boys' would always be a dominant side.

Whether that translated into a better competition, or would benefit Otago rugby on the whole, was a different matter.

Martin's position as an Otago age group coach helped the school. It would be a lot easier to spread the talent around the region, Idour said.

King's High School First XV coach Darryl Paterson believed the rule introduced by the New Zealand secondary school sports council should be adhered to in the Highlanders competition.

That rule limits First XVs to three players new to the team every year if they did not start school in year nine.

"It is a pretty uneven playing field we have now with what they can field."

Paterson felt it was unfair on pupils who had been at the school since year nine only to lose out to a player drafted in from another school.

 

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