Rugby: Rotorua Boys' High too good for overseas teams

Rotorua Boys' High School's Stuart Leach runs the ball against the under-18 Club Ciudad de Buenos Aires team from Argentina. Photo / Andrew Warner

Rotorua Boys' High School rugby teams have had a taste of South America in their first hit-outs of the 2018 season.

On Tuesday the first and second XVs hosted under-18 teams from Club Ciudad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and taught them a rugby lesson with 84-0 and 57-7 wins respectively.

On Wednesday it was the Rotorua Boys' High under-15 teams' turn as they went up against under-17 and under-18 sides from Uruguay's Club Champagnat de Rugby.

The first game went down to the wire, but Rotorua were able to produce a try in the dying minutes to win it. In the second game, the other under-15 side completed a clean sweep with a convincing win.

Rotorua Boys' High director of rugby Deon Muir said he was impressed by the depth of talent at the school this year.

"Both the first XV and second XV went in with similar structures and a focus on what we want to do with our attack and defence. With a high-scoring game we could easily have lost our structure, but we actually played some good rugby and stuck to it as much as we could. There were a lot of positives," Muir said.

Rotorua Boys' High School's Manny Crawford breaks away against the under-18 Club Ciudad de Buenos Aires team from Argentina. Photo / Andrew Warner

He said the games were treated as trials and gave him and the other coaching staff a good look at their players.

"From what I can see we've got a good balance across the team, in terms of positions, and a lot of depth in the first XV. When we brought on our replacement players in the second and third quarter they did well so that was positive and good to see - the strength of our team will be our bench.

"There's a lot of competition for positions, we've got a good front row, some good locks and a lot of competition in the loose forwards and midfield. The second XV were quite dominant too and a lot of good things came out of that game."

The under-15 games gave coaches a look at the talent coming through in the younger grades.

"There are a lot of gold nuggets in there, we've got a lot of depth. It's good to have a couple of days of rugby to see these boys have a run around. I'm amazed, being new to the school, at the amount of talent we've got at one school. It's quite astounding," he said.