Gregor Paul: Schoolboy rugby resets its moral compass - but is it enough?

St Peter's prop Zyon Holo scores the winning try against St Kents in last year's First XV schools semifinal. Photo / Photosport

COMMENT:

There is now, following St Kentigern College's commitment to sanction the playing time of pupils recruited last year from non-Auckland schools, a sense that the city's 1A schoolboy competition has reset its moral compass by committing to a universally agreed code of conduct.

St Kents has long been cast in the role of arch villain – accused of taking a Lex Luther approach to schoolboy rugby where it has been willing to do almost anything to be successful.

When it recruited five senior pupils last year for the express purpose of bolstering its First XV, it was deemed by 10 of the other schools in the 1A competition to be a gross breach of school sport ethos even if it wasn't in fact a breach of the existing competition rules.

Those 10 schools saw that move by St Kents as a step too far: a brazen crossing of a metaphoric line with which the school had flirted for the last decade.

It was an act that required a direct and unambiguous response and a victory for fair play of sorts came on Monday when it was revealed that St Kents had agreed to not field these new to school pupils for the first six weeks of the competition.

Perhaps, though, the bigger victory was found in a letter that chair of the school trust board, Dr John Kernohan, wrote to parents and former pupils, which said: "We accept that over several years we should have recognised concerns about an advantage being gained through the enrolment of students and their selection for the First XV."

St Kents, through a process of public admonishment and strong negative parental feedback, has accepted the need to review its recruitment strategies and approach to First XV and with that, provided the 10 schools that campaigned for change, some kind of reassurance that the 1A is now operating as it should.

St Peter's prop Zyon Holo scores the winning try against St Kents in last year's First XV schools semifinal. Photo / Photosport

But those same 10 schools, and indeed King's College which has sat through this whole escapade like some guilt-ridden ghost at the feast, need to now put themselves under the same scrutiny to which they did St Kentigern and challenge themselves to keep assessing where that metaphoric line of what is acceptable sits.

They have a code of conduct now that while welcomed and important, shouldn't necessarily be seen as a document with enough detail or clout to ensure that children are still not being enticed to compromise their education for the sake of their rugby development.

If there is indeed to be a successful morality re-boot of the 1A then every school in the competition has to be honest enough to accept that while St Kents may have been the most overt rogue operator, they were by no means alone in pursuing ethically questionable strategies designed to bring victory.

South Auckland has been a fertile hunting ground for plenty of schools other than St Kents and while the Catholic and public heavyweight schools of the 1A have not had scholarships to throw around, they have still managed over the years to lure talented players and no doubt, even having signed a code of conduct, could easily enough continue to find ways to recruit players without detection.

Their activities in this regard may have been entirely within the rules, but so too were the actions of St Kents.

So if St Kents is being held accountable to a collective code of conduct so too does every other school need to ask, regardless of what the code of conduct says, whether they feel it is appropriate to send teachers or sports directors to hang around the sidelines of the AIMS Games each year, hoping to entice 12-year-olds to their institution.

There can surely no longer be any acceptance of the argument that there is a difference between persuading intermediate-aged children to change educational track as opposed to targeting 17-year-olds in their final year of school.

St Kents players celebrate. Photo / Photosport

The intent in both scenarios is the same – to look beyond the existing school roll as a means to improve the chances of sporting success.

If there is to be a genuine shift in culture, attitude and practice, and if this newly signed code of conduct is to have any impact, then the public schools in the 1A must now be prepared to ask themselves whether, sub consciously, overtly, discreetly, passively or aggressively, they condone some kind of strategy to recruit talented players to their respective schools.

They must ask whether they are willing to accept that they will build their First XV only with the kids who walk willingly through the front gate in search of the holistic education to which they are entitled.

A big part of accepting this will be to make peace with the fact that private schools can't be held to the same philosophy and that they will always have the means to bolster their playing ranks by offering scholarships.

How the likes of St Kents and King's College use that mechanism will be up to them, but what has transpired in the last few months, is that these institutions will ultimately be held accountable by their parental communities whose voices will be heard if they don't like what they see.

For too long, too many schools in the 1A have justified their shady actions by saying they are merely keeping pace with their rivals.

The culture of excuse-making and rule-bending led to what was a nuclear arms race approach to First XV rugby in Auckland and produced no winners.

There is now some prospect of the 1A returning to the ethos that made it such a great competition in the first place, but it will require a significant number of adults to ask themselves the sort of questions they have previously been unwilling to ask.