The media-appreciating Feilding rugby tribe.
By Bruce Holloway and Adam Julian
Feilding High School caught a lot of schoolboy rugby followers by surprise when they rolled Auckland 1A champions Kelston Boys’ High School to snatch third place at the National Top Four First XV Tournament in Palmerston North.
In their first-ever Top Four appearance, a co-ed school from a town once famous for boasting the largest livestock saleyards in the Southern Hemisphere beat five-times national champions Kelston – having earlier gone within five points of toppling new titleholders Hamilton Boys’ High School.
And there’s another sphere where readers may be surprised to learn Feilding are also outperforming most schools – particularly those in Auckland – and that is in public communications.
While “media” can be a dirty word for Auckland’s 1A schools, they are far more cosmopolitan with their thinking in agricultural Feilding, under the guidance of the school’s rugby media and digital manager, Blair Rogers.
Just as teams have the likes of trainers, physiotherapists, managers, analysts and psychologists, the media manager has become a thing at Feilding.
Rogers goes the extra mile to liaise with mainstream media as well as publicising school rugby happenings on Facebook, Instagram (2200 followers), TikTok (1000 followers) and YouTube. He also has a responsibility for “observational work”, such as intelligence-gathering on other teams.
By contrast, Auckland 1A schools see big dangers in media coverage. Here there be monsters, here there be dragons.
Indeed, they cited unwanted and unregulated attention and unnecessary hype in instituting a media ban in late 2022, which still endures, and conspires against Sky TV again covering schoolboy rugby.
But Feilding are quite comfortable with adapting to the modern media environment, says Rogers, who has a background in information technology but was also a coach at Massey University in the mid- to-late 1990s.
“It helps to publicise your players because the better players become known and it helps attract higher honours, which is a credit to the school and becomes an achievement for all of us.”
As a school with a hostel (90 boys, 90 girls), Rogers said Feilding served a vast central North Island hinterland, and families liked to stay in touch with everything that was happening.
“Good rugby coaches can be hopeless at communicating – not that that’s a problem at Feilding – or just not necessarily be a computer person, so a media manager takes the load off the coach.
“If you lose communication with parents in particular, a rugby team will soon have problems.
Rogers said running vibrant media operations served as a connection point, helping build a sense of community within the school’s nine rugby teams and also added to the credibility of the Central North Island competition.
“The actual game time is just a small part of the process. Making friends and forging strong ongoing relationships is very important to us.”
But where Rogers and Feilding really stand apart from the crowd is how they are prepared to share the media spotlight with all their opponents, and add scoring details and achievements of visiting teams to their reports and postings.
“A lot of schools will crow about their wins but then go deadly quiet when there is a loss. That is not our way. We publicise our losses.
“If somebody thumps you – give them credit. Pay respect and acknowledge others, otherwise you do the game a disservice. Owning up to your failures is part of ownership – it is not all about being top dog.”
The comparison with the Auckland First XV media environment is stark in some cases.
For instance, St Kentigern had a terrific team once again this season, led the 1A table all season and the biggest sporting crowds at the college were for first XV matches.
But unlike Feilding, they largely steered clear of celebrating the deeds of their team on the school’s website. And there were just two sentences from St Kentigern on Facebook after the grand final:
“Rugby 1A final – tough battle for the boys today unfortunately going down to Kelston at Eden Park. Huge crowd to support the boys and everyone is very proud of your season.”
They didn’t even report the final score. It was left to followers to add it – and incorrectly at first. A day later, the St Kentigern debating team at least managed 186 words of coverage.
But when it comes to studiously ignoring the deeds of a First XV, you have to more admire the staunchness of Auckland Grammar, where headmaster Tim O’Connor is on record as wanting to avoid First XV media coverage because the school prefers to treat all sports equally.
Grammar’s website and Facebook feed happily supplied updates on hockey, basketball, swimming, squash, cross country, and of course their well-performed table tennis team, across the 2024 winter.
However, even though Grammar went within a converted try of making the 1A grand final this season, they only once weakened and ran a First XV match report on their website or Facebook (for the 30-26 win over King’s College back in June).
To be fair, the Grammar website did also supply one sentence of information ahead of the 1A semifinals: “The First XV Rugby team will host Kelston Boys’ High School in the semifinal of the 1A competition on Saturday 17 August, with kickoff at 2.30pm on the No 1 field.”
But overall, Grammar’s ability to mute what was once their sporting showpiece exhibited true dedication to whatever the cause was.
Across town, Blues and 1A First XV champions Kelston Boys’ High School ran some excellent audio-visual material on their Instagram feed, though somehow always avoided including anything but the most spartan of information to provide any sort of reader context.
Kelston were also delightfully humble in victory on the media front. In the school’s August 30 newsletter, winning the 1A title was almost an afterthought for principal Adeline Blair.
Under a “celebrations” sub-heading, Blair only got around to noting Kelston had claimed the 1A title after first reporting that their senior badminton players were runners-up in their league and their senior footballers were through to their finals.
Even Auckland Grammar might have found that a bit offhand.
Incidentally, while Kelston were party to the media ban which killed Sky TV’s traditional broadcasting of matches such as the Auckland grand final, the highfalutin’ arguments in favour of such a ban went out the window when they were happy to offer links to livestream footage of their Blues final against Westlake Boys High School.
Good on Kelston for supplying the link to their fans, but readers can make up their own minds on whether that is incongruous, given they were suddenly happy to publicise the same content that had previously been axed under a media ban, via a slightly lower quality medium.
King’s College showed a touch of class with some of their in-house media offerings.
They ran a detailed and informative profile on First XV coach Ian Robinson in the winter edition of their King’s Courier magazine, touching on everything from his coaching philosophy to the introduction of a toki (axe), which was this season carved for the rugby programme at King’s and given each week to the player who best embodied the school and team culture.
Further, they published an excellent weekly “Rugby Wrap” on their website, covering not just their First XV but all rugby teams, and were happy to quote coach Robinson in most of them.
Though again, it is remarkable the college can publicly inform on rugby to this extent but still buy into the collective 1A notion that media is intrinsically harmful and exploitative of students.
Sacred Heart supporters have for years run a 2400-strong Facebook group, which again featured passionate homespun match reports published not long after the final whistle on match days, which gave a real fan flavour of being there.
And they have recently instituted a major update with a new presence on all social media platforms, announcing they want to “digitally celebrate the past and support the future of our beloved game at the college”.
Incidentally, the latest newsfeed out of Sacred Heart includes much-respected Francis Stowers resigning as director of rugby after nine years.
St Peter’s College were superb, with high-quality informative weekly profiles of top players on their 4200-strong Facebook rugby feed, as well as offering pre-match squad announcements, match results and historical flashbacks. And after their win over Auckland Grammar, there was even a one-off post-match broadcast interview with coach Mark Wilson. So hope springs eternal.
Outside of Auckland, Palmerston North Boys’ High School were very committed with consistent updates of team and old boys activities, and a comprehensive written account of school fixtures.
National Top Four girls champions Manukura were another Manawatū media standout, with open, informative, regular kōrero.
Wellington College rugby graphics had more style than Andy Warhol, while aptly named skipper Harry Law contributed erudite commentary.
In terms of broadcasting, nationally Whakaata Māori (Maori Television) led the way with their YouTube livestreaming of Super 8 matches, and then TV coverage of the National Top Four finals in Palmerston North.
And if you watch enough of this stuff you might even find you pick up some of the lingo after a while (a scrum feed is whāngai kakari, and a collapsed maul is kaunuku hinga).
But it wasn’t perfect. Some of the commentary from the Hamilton-Nelson First XV Top Four final from Dale Husband and Mere Baker bordered on puerile. (When Hamilton’s Ollie Guerin scored, unbelievably they even gave it a chorus of “Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, oi, oi, oi”.)
Meanwhile, it has been fascinating to witness the emergence of two independent, committed streaming outfits in Bev’s Broadcasting in the Central North Island First (CNI) XV competition, and Huddy Sports, which has grown significantly in servicing community sport in the greater Wellington region.
Bev’s Broadcasting followed the fortunes of CNI champions St John’s College all season. They weren’t always able to get opposition team permission to livestream (on YouTube) but their coverage of the Central North Island final between St John’s and Feilding in Taupō drew close to 4000 views.
In North Harbour, champions Westlake continue to livestream their home matches on a free subscriber log-in basis.
The explosion of livestreaming was inevitable, having been accelerated by crowd restrictions during Covid, improved technology and transient lifestyles. Demand has driven a service that at its most rudimentary level can be provided by a cellphone.
One case in point is the manner in which Nelson College parents manfully filmed games and shared them on Facebook this winter.
Nelson play half of their matches five hours away, making physical attendance expensive, exhausting or impossible. So why shouldn’t parents, friends and those interested be able to watch when they actually can?
Shirley Boys’ High School teachers Michael Skinner and John Thurston (he didn’t play rugby league) used their skills and passion to produce an enterprising 24-minute documentary, Shirley to Spartans, A First XV Chronicle: 1959-2024, aimed at increasing understanding of Shirley’s rugby history. The school’s most recent All Black, Ryan Crotty, was among those profiled.
Skinner firstly designed a database of Shirley’s history, documenting all players and results, and to make this dry data more compelling, Thurston, the school’s head of media studies, was enlisted to create a visual version that could be easily digested by students, and updated regularly.
The content is now used in social studies as part of the local Aotearoa New Zealand Histories project. Rugby World Cup winners Craig “Greedy” Green (player #842), Warwick Taylor (#837) and Kimberly Smith (#132) are also proudly associated with Shirley.
Meanwhile, as digital possibilities expand, hard-copy match-day programmes are becoming scarcer and scarcer around the schools. How long before they become collectors’ items on Trade Me?
But one that deserves commendation is the 16-page colour match-day booklet produced by St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton for their home Central North Island competition, complete with mugshots of all their players for easy identification. Are there any similar programme efforts elsewhere? Please let us know at the email address below.
When the New Zealand Secondary Schools squad was named, something happened that hasn’t since the turn of the millennium – the selection of a Year 11 player.
Nico Stanley became the first fifth-former picked since Ben Atiga, also from Auckland Grammar, in 1999, back when selection was vigorously promoted, arial-tall, on the old dial-up.
Nico Stanley is the son of former All Black Jeremy Stanley and the grandson of 1987 Rugby World Cup-winning centre Joe Stanley, and like his famous forebears, settles robustly in midfield where he has a strong defensive game.
His mother, Anna Stanley, captained the Silver Ferns to World Cup netball glory in 2003.
Remarkably, the Stanleys and the Atigas are related and were neighbours in Trinity St, Ponsonby for several years.
Jeremy Stanley was a member of the last Auckland Grammar School First XV to win a National Top Four title in 1992.
Meanwhile, Atiga boasts one of the most impressive age-group records of any player in New Zealand. Between 1998 and 2001, he was part of Grammar First XVs that won 67 out of 81 games, including the Moascar Cup and a 1A championship.
He was unbeaten in the now-defunct New Zealand Under-16s, maintained a perfect record with New Zealand Schools in 1999 and 2000, and at the start of 2002, went on a UK and French tour where seven of eight matches were won.
Atiga also won World Under-19 titles in 2001 and 2002 and was the top points-scorer when New Zealand won the IRB World Under-21 Championship in 2003.
Unsurprisingly, he was promoted to the Auckland NPC team and in October of that year, he was in irresistible form when Auckland ended Canterbury’s 23-game tenure with the Ranfurly Shield, despite 26 points from Andrew Mehrtens.
He was a shock selection for the All Blacks’ 2003 Rugby World Cup squad and played his solitary test match in a 91-7 slaying of Tonga in Brisbane. Grammar’s 50th All Black was later named U21 world player of the year.
Atiga played a dozen years for Auckland, the Blues, Otago, the Highlanders and Edinburgh but now works in Scotland as a player development manager.
The only other Year 11 New Zealand Schools selection has been Todd Miller from Kamo High School. In 1990, despite a Miller try, New Zealand lost 17-11 to Wales and capped a poor campaign when tamed 9-7 by Australia.
The preceding years were more successful: unbeaten in 1991 and 1992. The 1992 New Zealand Schools team beat Ireland 27-25 and Australia 31-8 and included rock stars like Jeff Wilson, Jonah Lomu, Carlos Spencer, Royce Willis, Carl Hoeft and Trevor Leota.
Miller went on to play in four midweek victories for the All Blacks on their 1997 UK tour. He is best remembered as a dashing Waikato fullback (84 games, 29 tries, 56 wins) in a 21-game Ranfurly Shield tenure from 1998 to 2000.
Nine of his family played first-class rugby: Brad Miller, Milton, Jared, Ken, Troy, Clint, Darrell, and Sid and Brian Going.
Since 2008, Miller has been a physical education and elite sport teacher at Hamilton Boys’ High School. He’s often coached Hamilton’s Under-15 Premier rugby team, who have won national titles in 2013, 2014 and 2018.
Most Games For New Zealand U16s, Schools, U19s and U21s:
26: Sam Tuitupou, 23: Bradley Mika, 22: Ben Atiga, Thomas Waldrom, 19: Tim Fairbrother, Aaron Mauger, Jason Shoemark, 18: Jerry Collins, 17: Carl Hayman, 16: Corey Flynn, Clarke Dermody, 15: Gerrard Fasavalu, Riki Flutey, Tony Woodcock, 14: John Afoa, Jimmy Cowan, Doug Howlett, Campbell Johnstone, Ross Kennedy, Luke McAlister, Angus Macdonald, Seilala Mapusua. Source: New Zealand Rugby Almanack 2004.
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