An experienced coach has accused schools taking part in a breakaway First XV competition of having a "closed shop mentality."
Long-serving St Kevin’s College coach Justin Fowler took aim at the three boys’ schools — King’s, Otago Boys’ and Southland Boys’ — who have joined the new South Island competition.
He has also labelled a decision to backtrack on a proposal to boot those schools’ Second XVs out of the existing Southern Schools Rugby Championship as "absolutely ridiculous".
The three bigger schools will play in the South Island Boys Schools competition for the first two months of the season before joining the second round of the SSRC.
"I’m pretty hot under the collar about this," Fowler told the Oamaru Mail.
"I’m really disappointed those three boys’ schools have gone. I think it’s a terrible shame."
Fowler, who stressed he was speaking in a personal capacity, said the move happened “for no reason at all".
"There’s no benefit whatsoever that I can see for their rugby programmes.
"This is a very small group of boys’ schools that have decided to make some sort of super league thing.
"This sort of closed-shop mentality, big boys want to be big boys, is just destroying the game."
While the new competition format was “liveable", Fowler was upset the Second XVs from those three schools were allowed to join in the second half of the season.
They were initially going to be booted from the southern competition.
"That’s absolutely ridiculous, in my view. They’ve made their decision to leave us — why should we support their development of their Second XV players?"
Otago Secondary Schools Rugby Council chairman Greg Heller said the decision to include the Second XVs was voted on by the schools.
"The initial thinking and talks were that there would be no Second XVs [included] and over a series of weeks some proposals were presented where schools were able to vote on what they wanted," Heller said.
"One of those proposals was to include the Second XVs with the proviso that they could not qualify for division one.
"That was voted on by the schools.
"Each participating school got a vote and the majority was for the proposal to have Second XVs included."
Heller did not disclose the specific results of the vote.
"The feedback we got from the schools was that there was nothing wrong with the competition as it existed in 2025 and that included four Second XVs at that point.
"All we’ve done is replicate the same model with essentially the same schools with a caveat that no Second XV can be in division one.
"It’s certainly changed the landscape of South Island and I think we’ve been able to work with a blend, to accommodate the establishment of the South Island boys [competition] but also maintain the integrity of our competition."
The four Second XVs — King’s, Otago Boys’, Southland Boys’ and Timaru Boys’ — will play their own qualification competition to start the season.
The top two sides will then join SSRC division two and the bottom two will join division three.
