Island in the top stream

The new kids on the Auckland premier club rugby block have got an old master on their backs.

Buried in the pack of results this week lies the name Waiheke, proud owner of its first premier side.

Bristling with enthusiasm and a few borrowed players from Ponsonby, their debut on the mainland last Saturday ran out of puff as they faded 3-38 to Roskill.

But that will change. Deep in the Waiheke pack at training, although certainly not on game day, is the unmistakable figure of 56-year-old-Maurice Trapp, one of the greatest provincial coaches in New Zealand rugby history.

First things first, though.

The effervescent Nigel Marshall is the driving force behind the island's bid to become a top-notch club in Auckland. Once a hillbilly hideaway, Waiheke is just about another suburb now, give or take a ferry ride or two.

Marshall is the former boss of a building firm and has lived on the island for 25 years. The 50-year-old - the new Auckland women's coach - has previously coached Auckland age-grade sides, plus Mid-Canterbury for two seasons.

Now he's the Waiheke club chairman and secretary, along with coaching the new premier two side, which has been granted a year-long trial by the Auckland Rugby Union.

After watching Waiheke meander along with social and lower-grade sides, Marshall is gunning for permanent premier status, which will bring increased sponsorship and grants to bolster the junior game.

It's a tall order, starting a serious senior side from scratch, especially on an island with strong league leanings.

Only first five-eighths Mana Tahapahi, who has played for University and Thames Valley, has experience above this level, although the assortment of locals also includes hefty inside back Brent Ivory, who played league for the champion Mt Albert Bartercard Cup team.

"We're trying to coerce, bribe, scrape and borrow to put a team together," says Marshall.

"Grassroots ... I think you might say we're almost grassroots."

Things are on the up, though. First, there are impressive two-storey clubrooms on a council ground at Onetangi, which has already hosted NPC and Super 12 trial games. Throw in healthy sponsorship deals, and Waiheke is ahead of many mainland clubs.

The ground even has floodlights, all three poles of them, a major advance on the previous arrangement of three lightbulbs atop a wooden stick.

International wheeling and dealing is also going on.

Waiheke are looking overseas for players, and have had interest from as far as Ireland.

And on the night the Herald turns up to training, a couple of Fijians, including Seveci Sivivatu, the younger brother of Chiefs back and All Black prospect Sitiveni, are trying out. The long-term aim is to attract top-class club footballers to the island, giving them the chance of premier football and a new lifestyle.

But the Waiheke hero right now is their flyweight wing Nick Hewitt, man of the match against Roskill.

The 25-year-old Hewitt, a plasterer, is as Waiheke as it gets.

He's been playing here since the under-8s, when his family shifted to the island from the East Cape.

Rugby has suddenly taken on a new shape for Hewitt.

For a start, there's gym work. And secondly, there's Tai Bo.

"An Asian lady is teaching us - she had us yelling and stuff the other night," says Hewitt, a touch bewildered.

He is probably not as bewildered as the Waiheke tight forwards, though, who have come under the guidance of Trapp.

Originally, the former Auckland forward and master coach - who has houses in Auckland and on the island - was happy just to offer a bit of advice.

That bit of advice has gathered serious momentum, as the Waiheke fatties are finding out.

Trapp, invariably among the first to training, is in the thick of the action. At one point, he shoos an injured forward away from wrestling drills with the sort of impatient yet passionate tone once heard round Eden Park.

"Get it sorted, get it taped," says Trapp.

Even head coach Marshall gets a brief fend-off, as Trapp pleads for time to run a final drill.

"We'll do plenty more of this - you don't have to be a huge guy to maul properly," he tells a prop, who appears a wee bit too tired to agree or disagree.

As Wednesday night's training session comes to an end, Trapp can be found under a pile of bodies he had been manfully shaping into a maul.

Marshall tells the Herald: "At first Maurice didn't want to come on Saturdays because he had other things to do.

"But now he's at every training, and there he was at our first game last Saturday. This thing is contagious, for both of us."

Rugby is in Trapp's blood, and the transplanted Englishmen reflects that the Waiheke experience has taken his career full circle.

When he played for Harlequins in London, it involved a 2 1/2-hour drive to training, where he often found just a handful of comrades ready on time.

Enthusiastic to the core, he loved the New Zealand way, where an abundance of players were always ready and waiting. Now, though, his team barely scrape up a first XV at training.

Trapp grins in his mischievous way when asked what the Waiheke deal is all about. "Waiheke Island is paradise, and you can't have paradise without rugby."

The Waiheke pack might take a few breaths to agree, but Hewitt has no doubt about the Trapp influence.

"Inspiring," he says, before heading off to join the relative safety of the back division.