It’s going to be a big year for the Australian Rugby Union Schoolboys team. There are inbound tours from Tonga and New Zealand Schoolboys, and an end of year tour to Ireland and the UK. These are stars of the future who’ll become well known to you in years to come.
How do I know that? Lets just randomly look at any Australian Schoolboys team from the past, 2000 as an example. Mark Gerrard, Jone Tawaki, Ben Hand, Will Caldwell, Luke Doherty, Lachlan MacKay, and that’s just the back row in the photo. Cooper Cronk, James Hilgendorf, Lei Tomiki, Peter Hynes, Josh Valentine, Morgan Turinui and the list goes on.
This year’s Australian Schoolboys sides (Australia and Australia ‘A’) have recently been named. The 2009 teams are dominated by Queensland players; there are 22 in the sides. That’s because over the past few years Queensland have won the National Championships which are normally held in the June/July school holiday period. This is a bit of a surprise as Queensland field sides that are generally a year younger than NSW, due to the difference in the age kids start school. In fact, this year there are two 15 year olds from Queensland who’ve made the top team (wing Chris Sautia and lock Curtis Browning both from Brisbane State High).
Brisbane State High School has the highest representation with a total of eight players selected. I’m not sure whether this is a record or not but it’s got to say something about their rugby program run by Graham Noon. Queensland rugby is dominated by the schools involved in the GPS competition. There is a second tier competition which is nowhere near as strong, the Association of Independent Colleges (AIC). As an example, 20 of the 22 Queensland players are GPS, one AIC and one from a minor independent schools competition. BSHS is Brisbane’s only selective public school and is able to pick the best rugby players in the government school system from all over town. The other GPS rugby powerhouses at the moment are Nudgee and The Southport School. They stay ahead of the pack by offering lots of rugby scholarships, unlike some of the other sides.
In NSW, the GPS schools also lead the way in player strength. As in Brisbane, GPS players completely dominate the NSW No 1 side. This year there are representatives from Joey’s, Newington, Knox, Riverview and Scots College amongst the 18 NSW players selected in the Australian sides. Quite a few of the rest are from the myriad of lesser competitions involving CHS, CAS, CCC, ISA, AICES and Country Schools.
ACT schoolboys rugby is currently in decline with reduced participation rates occurring in private schools. The setting up of Year 11 and 12 colleges in the public school system has also impacted negatively on sport in general. In the ACT there are only two schools that would foot it with GPS schools in Brisbane and Sydney, St Edmunds and Marist.
The Australian Schoolboys sides are selected after the National Championships which this year were held at Knox College in Sydney. The National Champs involve teams from NSW (2), Queensland (2), ACT and the Combined States (rest of the states). There is a Division 2 National Championships held beforehand to select the Combined States team. This year QLD1 won all their matches, including the final against Combined States 41-17. It was a bit of a boilover with Combined States making the final but this is an indication that the spread of rugby throughout the traditional non-playing states is becoming stronger. They got there by defeating NSW1 20-15.
Big tests this year against Tonga (26 September at Riverview), New Zealand (9 October at Ballymore) with ‘A’ games in the preceding weeks and Irish Schools, Ireland U18, Welsh XV and various Regional England U18 sides on the tour.
Keep an eye out down the track for Liam Gill, Simon Morahan, Chris Sautia, Paul Alo-Emile, Kimamai Situata, Curtis Browning, Ted Postal and Krisome Au’uva (a Melbourne Storm scholarship holder). These are very promising players of the future from the Australian squads who I’ve seen play in Brisbane this year and have impressed.
The teams are:
Australian Schools squad to play Tongan Schools: Paul Alo-Emile (Brisbane State High School, QLD), Tyson Frizell (Illawarra SHS, NSW), Liam Gill (St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace, QLD), Kyle Godwin (Aquinas College, WA), Angus Hamilton (Scotch College, VIC), Ruka Hanlon (The Southport School, QLD), Marcus Heather (Endeavour SHS, NSW), Jake Holland (St. Edmunds College, ACT), Matt Ika (Brisbane State High School, QLD), Luke Jones (St Pius X College, NSW), Jack Kimmince (The Southport School, QLD), Simon Morahan (The Southport School, QLD), Joe O’Regan (Brisbane State High School, QLD), Greg Peterson (The Scots College, NSW), Hugh Roach (Newington College, NSW), Rohan Saifoloi (Brisbane State High School, QLD), Chris Sautia (Brisbane State High School, QLD), Waita Setu (St Joseph’s Nudgee College, QLD), Scott Sio (Trinity Grammar School, NSW), Kimamai Situata (St Joseph’s Nudgee College, QLD), Nick Stirzaker (Knox Grammar School, NSW), Jordan Tuapou (Brisbane State High School, QLD), Jacob Woodhouse (The Scots College, NSW).
Australia A squad to play Tongan Schools: Krisome Au’uva (Ipswich Grammar School, QLD), Curtis Browning (Brisbane State High School, QLD), Damien Cooke (Illawarra SHS, NSW), Steve Cummins (Hills SHS, NSW), Nick Curtis (Knox Grammar School, NSW), Jack De Guingand (St Kevin’s College, VIC) Rodney Esekia (Chandler College, VIC), Zach Fell (St Edward’s, Gosford NSW), Mitchell Felsman (Iona College, QLD), Matt Garland (Brisbane State High School, QLD), Tom Kingston (St Aloysius’ College, NSW), Tom Lamont (St Joseph’s College, NSW), Liam Law (Ipswich Grammar School, QLD), Matt Lucas (St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace, QLD), Ross Marais (The Southport School, QLD), Cayden Matehaere (St Joseph’s Nudgee College, QLD), Usaia O’Sullivan (Trinity Grammar School, NSW), Nathan Paila (Hallam Senior College, VIC), Ted Postal (St Joseph’s Nudgee College, QLD), Richard Quigley (The Scots College, NSW), Jack Rowntree (St Augustine’s College, NSW), Nick Turner (Emmanuel College, QLD), Joe Welch (St Ignatius’ College, NSW)
Tags: australia A, mark gerrard, morgan turinui, peter hynes, will caldwell
Lance Free: A nasty, opinionated little man whose narrow views and felonious intent can only mean 'Trouble' with a capital T. Interests: dwarf throwing and robotics. Favourite Sport: mungo bashing. Does he ever have anything positive to say? 
It is interesting that you make the comment regarding School boy Rugby in the ACT and you are right, Participation is very poor.
My question is what is the ARU, ACT rugby/Brumbies rugby doing to promote the game at school levels. Im not sure what the answer is so any ideas would be usefull as my son plays for his school and they were lucky to just get the numbers. Every time they play Eddies or Marist the score line is not pretty and i would like to see him play next year but i feel that he and others may be put off by the lack of interest at the school.
It is not healthy to just have two very strong school teams and the rest week as most parents try and send their kids to these schools
Pete – I’m afraid there’s no easy answer. The quick fix is for the school to offer scholarships but the reality is you need a decent rugby development program as a basis to build on. For that you need funding. Unless the school is prepared to invest, or funding is available from other sources, it’s a hard road.
Trying to align a rugby club with a school, say like Brothers is to Nudgee College in Brisbane, is an advantageous exercise for both organisations. Being able to play more games against NSW or visiting schools would also be a benefit. I wouldn’t know what involvement the ACTRU, or the others would have. The short answer to your woes is money.
I guess the ACTSRU is the conduit for some of this although some of these outfits can be a bit moribund. An example is in Queensland with the QRFSU schools union . There’s a situation here where the schoolboy trial system needs overhauling but they’re too tied up in power plays to do it i.e. there’s a need for more GPS teams in the trials: there’s equal representation between GPS and AIC trial teams although GPS is on a completely different level and as a result a large number of very good players don’t get the opportunity and miss out. That’s not to say that the schools rugby union don’t do a reasonable job with the resources that they have.
It’s very discouraging for boys to get hammered every week but you’re by no means the only one. It would be nice if support from the Brumbies etc was more overt, although it’s sometimes surprising how much can be done if you just ask them.
Thanks Lance,
I know its not easy. ACT struggled in the Australin championship due to the lack of players who know how to dig deep. The squad was mainly Eddies players who are so dominant here they dont know how to loose. IE. dig deep and tackle their buts off. A lot of teams here realy dont want to play in the top comp due to the kids being sick and tired of loosing. Im not being sour i want Rugby to be strong and healthy as i love the game. Again thanks for your input the more we discuss Rugby issues the better we can grow our game
Amazing that Australia’s “Super” team is so poor at developing local talent. You might almost think their business plan is to poach from other provinces, without doing any long-term good for Australian rugby.
Interesting article. Coming from a rural area the schoolboys system has always seemed quite alien to me, as there isn’t any organisation on the same level as the GPS, for example, but its obviously a good pathway for young players that come through it.
NSW and Qld Country are very underrated player pathways that produce good hard players. but the academy systems that exist at the franchises now unfortunately mean that if a kid hasn’t been spotted at 16 then he is unlikely to play Super rugby even if he can hook
up with a Sydney or Brisbane club.
Australian rugby needs not to leave behind country rugby — its easy for promising players to get discouraged by not being noticed at representative levels and away from the cities League scouts are everywhere and offer clear and attractive pathways to professional success.
Any idea how many of these boys are already contracted to the NRL?
If previous years are anything to go by, quite a few I would say.
I don’t think there’s many this year. Amongst the Queensland boys Somie Au’uva, Liam Law (IGS) and Waita Setu (Nudgee – Bronco Lagi Setu’s brother) are all rugby league players. Matt Lucas (Terrace) played mungo for one season. I believe all the BSHS guys are union, so that’s a good sign. Every year there is always some.
Ipswich Grammar generally have a number. In the years around Lagi Setu’s attendance at Ippy there were heaps of them, incl. Rodney Davies now with the Reds.
Don’t know about elsewhere.
I know we are losing Auva’a to the storm. the kid is a freak, we had him for pre-season training, lump of a kid with true skillset. big pity, he wanted to be coached by El Dommo as well.
With any luck Cote and Free, BSHS and a few nudgee characters will be coming to the Nest next year, a couple of these players have already pulled on a club jersey for us.
Good to hear from you El Dommo. Yes, Au’uva is a very damaging runner. I believe he was also an age grade league rep in NZ.
Actually, No 3 son had his first game for The Filth yesterday with a few Nudgee and State High characters……good win over a competent Tigers outfit. Deano @ The Doggies won’t be happy!
It’s a shame Sydney Boys High in NSW haven’t followed the lead of Brisbane State and invested in a similar rugby program. It’s sad to see one of the great rugby schools and a flagship public selective school just give up on a rugby program in favour of a the perception that an education involves nothing more than a HSC result.
The damage to the Sydney GPS comp, to rugby amongst non private school kids and to the school and public education system itself from High giving up is disappointing.
With BSHS it’s about selecting kids with a variety of sporting attributes (including rugby), and others with academic skills. My understanding is that the Sydney Boys High selection process is purely based on academics. As a consequence, they’re getting a load of ethnic kids who wouldn’t know a rugby ball if they fell over it.
It’s ironic that last week’s union convert Craig Wing is a Sydney High old boy (and part Filipino). The school now combines with Sydney Grammar to undertake fixtures. I believe there has been some intent by the school to reinvest in their rugby program and this year the takeup by students has been higher i.e. first time they’ve had 4 x U13 teams in some years (they have 16 teams in total). Hopefully they can build on that – it would be a great shame if the traditions of the past are lost.
It’s actually the ethnicity of the students that’s the problem, not necessarily their academic or sporting bent. For example, this year they have more cricket teams than any other GPS school (18). They also have 28 soccer teams and 32 basketball teams. They attract a lot of Indian and Asian kids, who excel academically. Maybe they need to look at their ethnic mix when awarding scholarships and select more whitey’s and cuzzy bro’s with a sports/academic background.
The other aspect is Sydney Boys High has been so bad at rugby now for so long that any kid who wants to play the game, or has bigger ambitions is not going to be interested. Even Craig Wing was the only good player in a horrible team (so I’ve heard)
haha cuzzy bros with academic background I like that one.
Tatafu Polota-Nau might have something to say!
Matt LUcas is my buddy at Terrace.
Lance,
How do you rate the talent coming through right now? How is the Wallabies’ future shaping up?
Mitch – I’ve no doubt the talent is there, its just about developing it. To me the future looks fairly rosy in terms of both an expansion of the game and the numbers and quality coming through. If we are successful in attaining the 5th Super 15 franchise that will provide another academy pathway for young players.
In addition to that, the more professional rugby vacancies that are available in Australia, the higher remuneration rates in union for the better players, and the opportunities to play and earn big bucks overseas will certainly help with recruitment.
The quality at Australian Schoolboy level is pretty good. As an example, if you’re anywhere near a TV this afternoon Fox Sports 1 has the Final from the Schoolboys National Championship on (QLD 1 v Combined States) at 3.30pm.
That said we have been consistently behind NZ in their programs. I think it was only last year that we finally beat their Schoolboys team in NZ for the first time EVER! They more often than not defeat our U20s team. But that’s probably just a reflection of their rugby at all levels.
One of the things in our favour is the now high proportion of polynesian boys playing the game here. It has been a bit of an explosion (as it has in league as well) and you’ll see that reflected in the Wallabies down the track.
What I’d like to see is more Schoolboys contact with South Africa and Argentina. I think there’s a lot of scope for tours inbound and outbound from/to those countries. Maybe even an annual Four Nations Schoolboys tournament? I suppose there isn’t limitless funds but I think there are more opportunties to be had.
From a parochial perspective, my local concern is the young talent pool being diminished in Queensland by interstate poaching – but that’s the reality of professional sport and perhaps an indictment to some extent of the local union. When you see the Toomua’s, Hamlins, Swanepoels etc disappearing over the hill it’s a bit of a worry……
Generally, I think we’re heading in the right direction.
Interesting comments!! What about after they leave school? Interesting to note that the three most capped players for Qld Andrew Slack, Mark Connors and Dan Crowley all came out of your “weak” second tier comp AIC. Not to mention Drew Mitchell and 3 other good players Qld Rugby missed namely, Luke McLean (Italy) Cooper Cronk (Storm) and William Zillman (Titans).
I gather by your comments that you went to one of those AIC schools. The sad fact of life is that only a couple of them would survive in the GPS competition, probably Marist Ashgrove and St Lawries. In fact, just a couple of years ago 41 of the 46 man Queensland Opens squads to the National Schoolboys Championship were from GPS schools. These schools actively recruit and in many cases provide scholarships to junior rugby players – that’s one of the reasons they capture the cream. I guess parents vote with their feet as well if they want their kids to play and develop in the strongest competition.
I’ve seen games from both comps this year and there is a considerable gulf between them, especially at the top level. That’s not to say that the AIC doesn’t produce some pretty good footballers, because they do. It would be nice to even it up a bit by discouraging scholarships but pig’s would fly before that happens. The good news is that a lot of those AIC boys go on to play club and Colts footy, which is great.
The various academies have identified the ‘elite’ players with potential by that stage. In fact, they’re identified in Years 10, 11 and 12. Some are recruited to the National Training Squad (NTS) which provides a continuous rugby program for them (up to about 4 sessions a week throughout the year) to further their development. Of the 31 players in the current Queensland NTS, 2 are from AIC schools (St Peters & Lawries), and 29 from GPS.
After they leave school they can also continue in the NTS but the top talent is recruited by the Academies. They get to play footy against other state academies and you’re like a part time professional player.
If eligible, a fair number of these make up the Australian U20 squad. As evidenced by the recent Junior RWC in Japan, our U20s weren’t quite good enough to make it through to the final. They have a number of times in recent years, taking it out a few years back. I’d say the depth is pretty reasonable but not quite as good as NZ or the UK (who even at U18 level are all professional players).
Colts club footy is OK but a bit of a letdown for the boys after First XV school rugby with all the tribal hoopla. If they’re really top talent they’ll be snaffled by their premier grade sides from Colts e.g. Dom Shipperley (Brothers) and Kennie Robertson (Wests) this year in Brisbane as an example.
Sorry about the ‘local’ nature of this but the question was asked.
Speaking of the 2nd tier AIC competition in Brisbane:
The two Queensland Schools U16 teams selected to compete in this week’s National Championships comprised 46 players in total. Only two players were from an AIC school.
They’ll need to change the Queensland Opens Trials format next year if this is an indicator of what the talent pool in that competition is like at the moment.
what do you think of ipswich grammars rugby i hear there a force for 2010 and even 2011 for gps
Alex – Ippy this year were pretty poor. They even finished below BBC. What happens is that they buy in a group of players every year to supplement fairly meagre resources.
It’s not entirely their fault as they are the smallest GPS school around – they only have about 700 – 800 secondary school boys and are situated in a lower socio-economic area (that’s a nice way of saying its a mungo town). IGS doesn’t play in the junior GPS competition because most of their young footy playing boys play league. This disadvantages them.
So they buy in a group of guys, usually league players and occasionally some rugby players from nearby i.e. Sunnybank or even from NSW etc. Unfortunately many of those boys return to league after they leave school and return nothing to rugby. Often they’ve been selected in representative sides, which is a shame.
This year, most of those guys ended up injured, which seriously depleted their First XV. I’m also told that some of their selections by their ‘international coach’ were relatively contentious as well. They had a couple of Australian reps this year, both of whom are leaguies. One is signed by the Melbourne Storm (Kirisome Auva’a) and the other, Liam Law, may be back next year (if he hasn’t turned 20 yet?)
As for 2010, I’m not sure it looks that promising. Only one of their players was selected in the two Queensland U16 teams and they didn’t have many Year 11s in this year’s Firsts. They’ll be buying a few no doubt so who knows what will turn up?
How do I know all this? Because two of my boys went to Ipswich Grammar not so long ago. It’s actually the oldest GPS school in Queensland. And let me say that it’s a very good school that punches above its weight.
Lance
Ipswich is a big place. Yes there are some poor people and some yobbos. They love their sport and league is very popular compared to Union which is played in the higher socio economic areas. NZ union is played in high and low se areas and maybe that is key. Glad to hear you praise Grammar just didn’t like the mungo comment which for as long as people say that about ippy the harderit is for it to change. Paul McLean was in Ippy before he met Mark Loane (also born in the swich) at Nudgee
state high is king!