March 23, 2025 • 21 mins
School rugby has been under the microscope for several years now after controversies over poaching between schools and live broadcast of games.
Those tensions have flared up again, with secondary schools pushing back against NZ Rugby’s plans for an Under-18 team to take on Australia.
It’s not the only sporting code to face push back though. This week, our young rowers take to the waters for the Maadi Cup regatta, and for the first time ‘year 14’ students are barred from taking part.
It all amounts to an ongoing debate about how much focus should be put on teenage athletes, while still allowing the likes of record breaking runner Sam Ruthe to soar.
First on The Front Page, we speak to NZ Herald journalist Gregor Paul about his latest reporting into school sports. Then later on the show, we’ll talk to AUT Associate Professor and Co-Director of AUT's Sports Performance Research Institute NZ, Simon Walters.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Ethan Sills
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Presented by the New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
School rugby has been under the microscope for years now
after controversies over poaching between schools and the live broadcast
of games. Those tensions have flared up again, with secondary
schools pushing back against NZED Rugby's plans for an under
eighteen team to take on Australia. It's not the only
(00:37):
sporting code to face pushback though. This week our young
rowers take to the waters for the.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Marty cart b Regatta and.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
For the first time year, fourteen students are barred from
taking part. It all adds to an ongoing debate about
how much focus we should be putting on teenage athletes
while still allowing the likes of record breaking runner Sam Ruth.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Later on the Front.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Page, we'll talk to AUT Associate professor and co director
of AUT's Sports Performance Research Institute and z Simon Wallace.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But first we speak to.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Nzet Herald journalist Gregor Paul about his latest reporting into
school sports. Gregor The Herald reported recently about tensions between
schools and New Zealand Rugby about plans to create an
under eighteen's team. Now the schools feel this would not
only detract from the boys' education, but from the existing
(01:36):
secondary school teams.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
What do you make of zetas wish here?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, you've got to see this problem and there's a
problem from both sides. That the schools have run their
own program if you like, forever and the pinnacle of
first fifteen rugby for the last forty five years has
been a New Zealand secondary schools team.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Now New Zealand Rugby, it's not that they.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Don't like that idea, but they want to have some
kind of control and influence on kids of that age
because the way things are playing out at the moment,
if you're an elite player at that age group, you're
not that far away from becoming a professional, and you're
not even that far away in some cases of becoming
an All Black. For some kids, it's a really short
(02:19):
step from school to super rugby into the Old Blacks.
So New Zealand Rugby want to have greater influence. They
want to call that a pathway, they want to call
that a high performance team, and hence they want to
take ownership of what I suppose and their argument for
doing it is that they feel that there are kids
who are under eighteen. They say about thirty percent of
(02:41):
the kids that got picked in their various teams last
year who weren't actually at school, or they were at
schools where they didn't have a first fifteen program and
they were therefore forced to play for clubs. So if
you open, if you change the New Zealand secondary schools
into an under eighteen team, it becomes more inclusive and
you can have more kids avail to play in it.
But the schools will be arguing, look, this is a
(03:04):
this is a system that's not broken. Why are we
trying to fix it?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Do you reckon the school's defiance is actually about the boys' education?
Or do the schools get some kind of incentive by
having a good team that wins all the time?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Or am I just being a negative Nancy?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I know you're not being a negative Nancy. Mean, look,
I think that there's a general level here school principles.
I didn't spend a lot of time around my school principle, thankfully,
but they tend to be you know, they've got a
view about how they want things. They've controlled things, they
want things to be on their watch. It's on a
sort of broadbrush level. They don't like the idea of
(03:38):
outside interference of a third party i e.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
In New Zealand Rugby having control over their kids. So
that's part of the issue. Is it about their education?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Well, there's a legitimate concern that if you give a
third party the right to schedule training, camps, trials, when
matches get played at that level, you could easily have
massive interfere apearance in your academic schedule because they won't
be aligned at that point. And you know, if New
Zealand Rugby decided they want to have a camp in September,
(04:08):
then you know kids are going to be asking can
we leave school? Can we come out of school at
a time where they really do need to be in
school for their academic cycle, which you know that's kind
of getting close to exam time. So there is a
legitimate concern around giving control of scheduling to another body
because schools argue that they, you know, they are the
best institution to provide a holistic and conjoined education if
(04:31):
you like. Where they can build Rugby around academics, they
can build it around other commitments without everything you know, clashing,
So yeah, I do think they're concern on that front
as genuine.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
How many of these kids would actually go on to
have successful careers in rugby and become an all black
and stuff. Because if you take them, the ones that
are really good in school, ship them off to these
kind of camps and they don't succeed in becoming a
rugby star and their education is laxed, then that puts
(05:05):
a huge amount of pressure on them.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, one hundred percent, right, Look, tiny, tiny, one percent,
I would imagine I don't actually know the numbers, but
people sort of quote less than one percent. You know,
what of these kids will will succeed in becoming full
time professional rugby players for a duration that they could
say that they made a living out of it.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Very hard to do.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So the schools, I think are right because if you
create an under eighteen team and start talking about pathways,
training camps, all this kind of stuff, it starts to
feel that you're professionalizing the system in the minds of
the players, and the schools are arguing, well, if we
just have a New Zealand Secondary schools team at the
pinnacle and at the end of the year, the best
(05:46):
twenty kids are picked and you get to go to Australia.
It's almost like a prize rather than your a career
and centive. It's a hey, your prize is you played
really well on our team. Someone else thought that you
were that good that you'll play in a schools team.
So you're kind of de intensifying. You're not glamorizing it
to the same extent. You're not saying if you make
(06:07):
this team, you know you're now in a system where
we're pushing you through with a view that you could
become a professional rugby player. You're just being rewarded for
having played quite well and a lot of the kids
are more comfortable with that environment because we do.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I feel I would rather start.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
I would like to see holistic kids coming out of
school so that you could play for a New Zealand
secondary schools team.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Because you're really good at rugby.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
But your plan at that point is still you know
you've done well academically, you're off to go to university
or you're involved in a trade and you're thinking along
those lines rather than I've made the New Zealand under
eighteen team. I'm now thinking I could push forward and
try and be a professional rugby player. The nuance is
quite significant when you think about it in those terms.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
I mean, when I was a student, it was for
kind of a pretty common knowledge that the big school
has always got the best players. The school I went
to was far from a top sporting school or academic school,
so we didn't have the best team. Nobody was being
enticed to come and play for our school, that's for sure.
Any players we had were guys that were kind of
homegrowing and just went through the ranks. And that's kind
(07:15):
of what some of the schools who are complaining about
this practice are saying, Like, one of the principals of
one of the schools that has lost the player to
Saint Kens has seen you and our teachers worked hard
on him one of the students for three years academically
and he's done really well. And now Saint Kent's are
reaping the benefits not only from the academic staff but
also sporting wise.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And this comes only a few years after some major
scandals in schoolboy rugby. Hey, firstly, we've had several instances
of tensions over alleged poaching of students to play for
a school rugby team, starting in late twenty eighteen, when
I think Saint Kent's wasn't it got boycotted from the
competition over its tactics.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Then in twenty twenty, Sky.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Sports broadcast plans of school games ran into issues with
Auckland and they eventually pulled the pin. Now, why are
we so passionate about teenagers playing rugby?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
What does a win mean for school?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Well?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
When you say why are we, I mean push back
on the question a little bit and say who's the Wii?
Because as a parent to three kids, you know, I
fully endorse sport as something that my kids have all done.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
They've all enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
But I couldn't care less what level they perform at.
I don't care whether they win or lose. I just
care that they enjoy it. And I suspect that there
are a massive mix of views among parental communities around.
You know how many parents would agree with me on that?
How many parents think, actually, I want my kid to win,
I want my kid to play for the top team.
(08:44):
I want my kid to be coached almost professionally. Because
your question is where does the passion come from and
what does passion mean? I suppose because everyone's got a
different view about what role sports should play, whether it's
just for participation, to round that in education, is it
to in is that a career prospect? And I think
all of these things aren't particularly well managed through the
(09:05):
school system because schools come under that kind of such
a variety of pressures from different parental expectation that they
don't quite know how to manage it. And probably what
we've seen is that we've aired towards allowing those that
want professionalization of sport, that want their kid to be
given every opportunity to go on and play at the
highest level. I think we've carried out to that parental
(09:29):
force and that's where you see the passion coming from.
Hence we got televised drugby hence we had poaching, because
schools feel that pressure, particularly private schools who use it
as an enticement tool. They think success on the sports
field relates to people wanting to pay money to come
to that school because their kid might get that opportunity that,
you know, to play at the highest level. So I
(09:50):
really think we've got a multitude of problems that swirl
around school sport and it all relates to different expectations,
and schools probably got out of control in the sense
that they bowed to the pushy parent, if you like,
and maybe what we've seen in the last two three
four years of schools regaining a bit of control and
pushing back against the pushy parents.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Heading to the water.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Earlier this year, schools involved in the rowing competition voted
overwhelmingly to ban year fourteen players from taking part in
the Marty cap. These were players who should have graduated
high school already, but remained enrolled for a few more
months so they can keep competing. Now, are you surprised
it took this long to ban this practice.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Well, probably not, because I think it's one of those
things that crept up through a legitimate pathway that I
think back in time there was some legitimacy to some
academic kids coming back for a short period because I
think back then there were exams potentially all overseas, exams
that they were doing that they needed to come back
and do that enhanced their ability to go to an
(10:54):
overseas university, and hey, guess what, while you're here, legitimately,
you know, you might as well up in the boat
and row or whatever was happening. So I think there
was a sort of legitimate start to all this, but
what always happens in schools is that that system, over
time gets abused, and certainly in rugby, there were guys
coming back to school who had done particularly well academically
(11:16):
in year thirteen, but they also hadn't fulfilled ambition, you know,
to make a representative team, or they felt that if
they came back for a year fourteen, you know, they
might get picked up on a professional contract or a
pathway or whatever they were thinking. And over time the
system kind of got out of control a little bit
and people lost track of just how many year fourteen
(11:38):
kids were coming in to play sport. So it's probably
just one of those gradual creeps that happened, and then
eventually I think the rowing probably became the flashpoint where
principles realized, actually, there's actually quite a lot of kids
because of the timing of the Mardi Kappas suspect because
early in term one, so if you have year fourteen kids,
they can come back for one term.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
And I think they just got out of control.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
They realized how many kids were doing it, and now
they've taken a stance and say, nop, this is getting
this is getting silly. So look, it doesn't surprise me
it took that long because you've got to have a
bit of an overview, and it's sometimes hard to see
when you're in the system.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Thanks for joining us, Gregor.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
In a country where some sports reigned supreme, there's a
huge focus on prepping and priming our next generation of stars.
Co director of AUT's Sports Performance Research Institute and said
Simon Wallace joins us now to talk about the pressure
we put on our teenage athletes. Simon, you've done research
(12:51):
into this area. What can you tell us about the
health impacts on teens that are caught up in those
high profile sports like this.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
It's not so much the impact, it's the potential impact
that the increasingly pressurized environment which we've seen over a
number of years, which is sort of accelerating at the moment,
consequently leads to potential impacts on young people participating in sports,
and those can be play out in religion to physical
and physiological impacts, mental health impacts, and psychological The evidence
(13:24):
sort of shows that if there's a supportive environment in
place for young people as they entered these environments, a
lot of those can be mitigated against. So it's really
about the support networks that are in place to help
young people navigate these pressures, which ultimately decide if these
impacts are going to play out.
Speaker 7 (13:42):
In any way.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Tell me what does high athlete identity mean?
Speaker 6 (13:46):
High the identity is an area throughout the last decades
for youth in particular, is problematic, as if you define
your character in relation to your ability. Let's say in
New Zealand, same school verse fifteen rugby player, they just
associated with that. With rugby sort of being perceived traditionally
as our national sport, you could have your identity wrapped
(14:07):
up with being that rugby player. That can be challenging
in many ways because if you get injured and for example,
and your career ends, or if you get injured and
you miss the season, if your sense of self worth
and self esteem is so wrapped up in your athletic prowess,
then that can have an impact on other aspects of
your life. And if that's taken away, that can be
(14:28):
you know, sort of devastating effects.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's quite a common trope in those teen dramas, isn't it.
When there's a high school jock or something and he
gets a knee injury and he thinks the world's going
to end?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Is it that kind of thing?
Speaker 6 (14:39):
Yeah, And if you think about sort of you know,
in the New Zealand situation like the rugby league, so
a lot a lot of young people go over to
the NRL sixteen seventeen, eighteen years of age. There's a
lot invested in that that might be sort of wanting
to make the family proud, that obviously want to establish
themselves a professional career if other things have gone by
the by, So if they're not focusing on their education
and sort of upskilling, so if sport doesn't work out
(15:01):
for them, you know, that can be really problematic. So
we've seen that over the years with people going into
pursue high performance sport careers and then that's been taken
away for whatever is lid and make the cut based
on sort of talent development or they got injured and
that didn't work out, or they got homesick and need
to come home. So if everything is wrapped up and
(15:21):
you know, I'm an athlete as opposed to I'm a
seventeen year old boy or a girl who happened to
be good at sport, then that gets really problematic.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
So it would be important to have that support network
around you.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
And social media has magnified everything that we experienced, well,
when I experienced when I was younger. You know, if
you were going through those adolescent years, they're tough enough anyway,
but now with a constant spotlight on you through social
media and self image and status and all.
Speaker 7 (15:50):
Of that, there's no real hiding from it.
Speaker 6 (15:52):
You can't get so it's almost like a constant pressure
that you can't get away from. So learning strategies to
deal with that and having the supported networks around becomes
really really important.
Speaker 8 (16:04):
Before I started looking up statistics, I made a phone
call to the guy in my town who's the president
of the local Little League association. He told me that
the Little League Association has been in existence since nineteen
fifty nine. Now, we couldn't come up with a statistically
credible estimation of the number of children who had played
in the league over all of those years, so for
(16:26):
the sake of argument, let's just say it was a lot.
They told me that in their almost sixty years of existence,
the number of children that had gone through their program
that he knew of that ended up playing Major League
Baseball was two.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I would all like to think that everyone can flourish
and succeed, but being really stick here, only a handful
of kids playing in their chosen sport today are actually
going to make it professionally, aren't they. So what's the
point of putting so much pressure on these teenagers?
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (16:58):
I think, Look, I love and it's great to see
people excel and do their best at it. But we
know the evidence shows in the United States with the
NFL and.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
The Premier league football academies.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
You know, it's something like, you know, these young people
aget signed up really at really young ages for these
premier league academies, and yeah, very few. We know from
the evidence that very few actually make it through to
professional ranks.
Speaker 7 (17:23):
So if you take the.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
Premier league football academies in the UK and you look
at the NFL, the amount of athletes who are signed
quite young and actually go on to play in the
professional game, I think it's about one to two percent
of young people who actually are signed up with football
academies in the UK.
Speaker 7 (17:41):
So very few people actually do make it through. You'd
have to ask the.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Question, why so much pressure and why so much investment
so young, and it sort of closing the door on
late developers. As youth develop at different stages, some develop
earlier than others, and that those late developers possibly not
selected early on because of their haven't developed physically as
fast as their peers. Possibly we're losing them from sport
(18:06):
as well. So it's a double wammy. The ones who
are in the system the majority don't make it, and
it closes the door on other people from actually entering
into the system.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
So I saw last week fifteen year old runner Sam
Ruth became the youngest person to ever run a sub
four minute mile. Now, this is obviously a major achievement
for him personally, but for the country as well. Where
do we strike that balance between supporting clear superstars like
Sam but not thrusting them into the spotlight so much
that it could negatively impact on them.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
Yeah, I've been following that.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
You know, that's an incredible performance from somebody who are
young and attract significant media attention.
Speaker 7 (18:44):
From Olympics point of view, the International Olympic.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
Committee commissioned about twenty five leading experts in youth development
from across the world, so scientists, physiologists, people with experiencing
coaching youth development sports psychologists.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
They came up with a consensus.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
Statement on what age is the right age when young
people should be going to the Olympics, and they couldn't
agree on an age. So what they did do was
identify all the challenges and barriers, some of them we've
talked about that do impact on young people, and they
came up with recommendations that would support somebody like Sam
for example, be a classic example of that. But it's
(19:21):
having the right people around them who understand the appropriate
training load for people going through the adolescence and they'll
go through various stages of growth spurts. We know that
during adolescence the risk of injury is much higher than
for other age groups. So it's having that knowledge around
them from the trainers and the people working with them
(19:42):
physically to understand what an appropriate training load is. Then
you also need some supportive parenting around them to help
guide them through the pressures that come with that. You know,
the school environment and everybody involved with them around them
needs to be providing a lot of support. Now, now
what I read about Sam, I don't know Sam. It
seems he doesn't have a very supportive environment around him
(20:03):
and that's great, but you know, not athlete is going
to have that, So yeah, there is a lot of
pressure on it and it needs to be. You just
need to support these people with a network of people
around them. That's a sports organizations, the cultures, xos, physiologists,
the nutritionists and that rock around service which helps them
navigate this time because he really is in the spotlight right.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Thanks for joining us, Simon.
Speaker 7 (20:25):
No problem, it's pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at NZ Herald, dot co dot MZ. The Front Page
is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is
also a sound engineer.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
behind the headlines.
Hilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Presented by the New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
School rugby has been under the microscope for years now
after controversies over poaching between schools and the live broadcast
of games. Those tensions have flared up again, with secondary
schools pushing back against NZED Rugby's plans for an under
eighteen team to take on Australia. It's not the only
(00:37):
sporting code to face pushback though. This week our young
rowers take to the waters for the.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Marty cart b Regatta and.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
For the first time year, fourteen students are barred from
taking part. It all adds to an ongoing debate about
how much focus we should be putting on teenage athletes
while still allowing the likes of record breaking runner Sam Ruth.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Later on the Front.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Page, we'll talk to AUT Associate professor and co director
of AUT's Sports Performance Research Institute and z Simon Wallace.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But first we speak to.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Nzet Herald journalist Gregor Paul about his latest reporting into
school sports. Gregor The Herald reported recently about tensions between
schools and New Zealand Rugby about plans to create an
under eighteen's team. Now the schools feel this would not
only detract from the boys' education, but from the existing
(01:36):
secondary school teams.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
What do you make of zetas wish here?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, you've got to see this problem and there's a
problem from both sides. That the schools have run their
own program if you like, forever and the pinnacle of
first fifteen rugby for the last forty five years has
been a New Zealand secondary schools team.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Now New Zealand Rugby, it's not that they.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Don't like that idea, but they want to have some
kind of control and influence on kids of that age
because the way things are playing out at the moment,
if you're an elite player at that age group, you're
not that far away from becoming a professional, and you're
not even that far away in some cases of becoming
an All Black. For some kids, it's a really short
(02:19):
step from school to super rugby into the Old Blacks.
So New Zealand Rugby want to have greater influence. They
want to call that a pathway, they want to call
that a high performance team, and hence they want to
take ownership of what I suppose and their argument for
doing it is that they feel that there are kids
who are under eighteen. They say about thirty percent of
(02:41):
the kids that got picked in their various teams last
year who weren't actually at school, or they were at
schools where they didn't have a first fifteen program and
they were therefore forced to play for clubs. So if
you open, if you change the New Zealand secondary schools
into an under eighteen team, it becomes more inclusive and
you can have more kids avail to play in it.
But the schools will be arguing, look, this is a
(03:04):
this is a system that's not broken. Why are we
trying to fix it?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Do you reckon the school's defiance is actually about the boys' education?
Or do the schools get some kind of incentive by
having a good team that wins all the time?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Or am I just being a negative Nancy?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I know you're not being a negative Nancy. Mean, look,
I think that there's a general level here school principles.
I didn't spend a lot of time around my school principle, thankfully,
but they tend to be you know, they've got a
view about how they want things. They've controlled things, they
want things to be on their watch. It's on a
sort of broadbrush level. They don't like the idea of
(03:38):
outside interference of a third party i e.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
In New Zealand Rugby having control over their kids. So
that's part of the issue. Is it about their education?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Well, there's a legitimate concern that if you give a
third party the right to schedule training, camps, trials, when
matches get played at that level, you could easily have
massive interfere apearance in your academic schedule because they won't
be aligned at that point. And you know, if New
Zealand Rugby decided they want to have a camp in September,
(04:08):
then you know kids are going to be asking can
we leave school? Can we come out of school at
a time where they really do need to be in
school for their academic cycle, which you know that's kind
of getting close to exam time. So there is a
legitimate concern around giving control of scheduling to another body
because schools argue that they, you know, they are the
best institution to provide a holistic and conjoined education if
(04:31):
you like. Where they can build Rugby around academics, they
can build it around other commitments without everything you know, clashing,
So yeah, I do think they're concern on that front
as genuine.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
How many of these kids would actually go on to
have successful careers in rugby and become an all black
and stuff. Because if you take them, the ones that
are really good in school, ship them off to these
kind of camps and they don't succeed in becoming a
rugby star and their education is laxed, then that puts
(05:05):
a huge amount of pressure on them.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, one hundred percent, right, Look, tiny, tiny, one percent,
I would imagine I don't actually know the numbers, but
people sort of quote less than one percent. You know,
what of these kids will will succeed in becoming full
time professional rugby players for a duration that they could
say that they made a living out of it.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Very hard to do.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So the schools, I think are right because if you
create an under eighteen team and start talking about pathways,
training camps, all this kind of stuff, it starts to
feel that you're professionalizing the system in the minds of
the players, and the schools are arguing, well, if we
just have a New Zealand Secondary schools team at the
pinnacle and at the end of the year, the best
(05:46):
twenty kids are picked and you get to go to Australia.
It's almost like a prize rather than your a career
and centive. It's a hey, your prize is you played
really well on our team. Someone else thought that you
were that good that you'll play in a schools team.
So you're kind of de intensifying. You're not glamorizing it
to the same extent. You're not saying if you make
(06:07):
this team, you know you're now in a system where
we're pushing you through with a view that you could
become a professional rugby player. You're just being rewarded for
having played quite well and a lot of the kids
are more comfortable with that environment because we do.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I feel I would rather start.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
I would like to see holistic kids coming out of
school so that you could play for a New Zealand
secondary schools team.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Because you're really good at rugby.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
But your plan at that point is still you know
you've done well academically, you're off to go to university
or you're involved in a trade and you're thinking along
those lines rather than I've made the New Zealand under
eighteen team. I'm now thinking I could push forward and
try and be a professional rugby player. The nuance is
quite significant when you think about it in those terms.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
I mean, when I was a student, it was for
kind of a pretty common knowledge that the big school
has always got the best players. The school I went
to was far from a top sporting school or academic school,
so we didn't have the best team. Nobody was being
enticed to come and play for our school, that's for sure.
Any players we had were guys that were kind of
homegrowing and just went through the ranks. And that's kind
(07:15):
of what some of the schools who are complaining about
this practice are saying, Like, one of the principals of
one of the schools that has lost the player to
Saint Kens has seen you and our teachers worked hard
on him one of the students for three years academically
and he's done really well. And now Saint Kent's are
reaping the benefits not only from the academic staff but
also sporting wise.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And this comes only a few years after some major
scandals in schoolboy rugby. Hey, firstly, we've had several instances
of tensions over alleged poaching of students to play for
a school rugby team, starting in late twenty eighteen, when
I think Saint Kent's wasn't it got boycotted from the
competition over its tactics.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Then in twenty twenty, Sky.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Sports broadcast plans of school games ran into issues with
Auckland and they eventually pulled the pin. Now, why are
we so passionate about teenagers playing rugby?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
What does a win mean for school?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Well?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
When you say why are we, I mean push back
on the question a little bit and say who's the Wii?
Because as a parent to three kids, you know, I
fully endorse sport as something that my kids have all done.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
They've all enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
But I couldn't care less what level they perform at.
I don't care whether they win or lose. I just
care that they enjoy it. And I suspect that there
are a massive mix of views among parental communities around.
You know how many parents would agree with me on that?
How many parents think, actually, I want my kid to win,
I want my kid to play for the top team.
(08:44):
I want my kid to be coached almost professionally. Because
your question is where does the passion come from and
what does passion mean? I suppose because everyone's got a
different view about what role sports should play, whether it's
just for participation, to round that in education, is it
to in is that a career prospect? And I think
all of these things aren't particularly well managed through the
(09:05):
school system because schools come under that kind of such
a variety of pressures from different parental expectation that they
don't quite know how to manage it. And probably what
we've seen is that we've aired towards allowing those that
want professionalization of sport, that want their kid to be
given every opportunity to go on and play at the
highest level. I think we've carried out to that parental
(09:29):
force and that's where you see the passion coming from.
Hence we got televised drugby hence we had poaching, because
schools feel that pressure, particularly private schools who use it
as an enticement tool. They think success on the sports
field relates to people wanting to pay money to come
to that school because their kid might get that opportunity that,
you know, to play at the highest level. So I
(09:50):
really think we've got a multitude of problems that swirl
around school sport and it all relates to different expectations,
and schools probably got out of control in the sense
that they bowed to the pushy parent, if you like,
and maybe what we've seen in the last two three
four years of schools regaining a bit of control and
pushing back against the pushy parents.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Heading to the water.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Earlier this year, schools involved in the rowing competition voted
overwhelmingly to ban year fourteen players from taking part in
the Marty cap. These were players who should have graduated
high school already, but remained enrolled for a few more
months so they can keep competing. Now, are you surprised
it took this long to ban this practice.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Well, probably not, because I think it's one of those
things that crept up through a legitimate pathway that I
think back in time there was some legitimacy to some
academic kids coming back for a short period because I
think back then there were exams potentially all overseas, exams
that they were doing that they needed to come back
and do that enhanced their ability to go to an
(10:54):
overseas university, and hey, guess what, while you're here, legitimately,
you know, you might as well up in the boat
and row or whatever was happening. So I think there
was a sort of legitimate start to all this, but
what always happens in schools is that that system, over
time gets abused, and certainly in rugby, there were guys
coming back to school who had done particularly well academically
(11:16):
in year thirteen, but they also hadn't fulfilled ambition, you know,
to make a representative team, or they felt that if
they came back for a year fourteen, you know, they
might get picked up on a professional contract or a
pathway or whatever they were thinking. And over time the
system kind of got out of control a little bit
and people lost track of just how many year fourteen
(11:38):
kids were coming in to play sport. So it's probably
just one of those gradual creeps that happened, and then
eventually I think the rowing probably became the flashpoint where
principles realized, actually, there's actually quite a lot of kids
because of the timing of the Mardi Kappas suspect because
early in term one, so if you have year fourteen kids,
they can come back for one term.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
And I think they just got out of control.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
They realized how many kids were doing it, and now
they've taken a stance and say, nop, this is getting
this is getting silly. So look, it doesn't surprise me
it took that long because you've got to have a
bit of an overview, and it's sometimes hard to see
when you're in the system.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Thanks for joining us, Gregor.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
In a country where some sports reigned supreme, there's a
huge focus on prepping and priming our next generation of stars.
Co director of AUT's Sports Performance Research Institute and said
Simon Wallace joins us now to talk about the pressure
we put on our teenage athletes. Simon, you've done research
(12:51):
into this area. What can you tell us about the
health impacts on teens that are caught up in those
high profile sports like this.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
It's not so much the impact, it's the potential impact
that the increasingly pressurized environment which we've seen over a
number of years, which is sort of accelerating at the moment,
consequently leads to potential impacts on young people participating in sports,
and those can be play out in religion to physical
and physiological impacts, mental health impacts, and psychological The evidence
(13:24):
sort of shows that if there's a supportive environment in
place for young people as they entered these environments, a
lot of those can be mitigated against. So it's really
about the support networks that are in place to help
young people navigate these pressures, which ultimately decide if these
impacts are going to play out.
Speaker 7 (13:42):
In any way.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Tell me what does high athlete identity mean?
Speaker 6 (13:46):
High the identity is an area throughout the last decades
for youth in particular, is problematic, as if you define
your character in relation to your ability. Let's say in
New Zealand, same school verse fifteen rugby player, they just
associated with that. With rugby sort of being perceived traditionally
as our national sport, you could have your identity wrapped
(14:07):
up with being that rugby player. That can be challenging
in many ways because if you get injured and for example,
and your career ends, or if you get injured and
you miss the season, if your sense of self worth
and self esteem is so wrapped up in your athletic prowess,
then that can have an impact on other aspects of
your life. And if that's taken away, that can be
(14:28):
you know, sort of devastating effects.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's quite a common trope in those teen dramas, isn't it.
When there's a high school jock or something and he
gets a knee injury and he thinks the world's going
to end?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Is it that kind of thing?
Speaker 6 (14:39):
Yeah, And if you think about sort of you know,
in the New Zealand situation like the rugby league, so
a lot a lot of young people go over to
the NRL sixteen seventeen, eighteen years of age. There's a
lot invested in that that might be sort of wanting
to make the family proud, that obviously want to establish
themselves a professional career if other things have gone by
the by, So if they're not focusing on their education
and sort of upskilling, so if sport doesn't work out
(15:01):
for them, you know, that can be really problematic. So
we've seen that over the years with people going into
pursue high performance sport careers and then that's been taken
away for whatever is lid and make the cut based
on sort of talent development or they got injured and
that didn't work out, or they got homesick and need
to come home. So if everything is wrapped up and
(15:21):
you know, I'm an athlete as opposed to I'm a
seventeen year old boy or a girl who happened to
be good at sport, then that gets really problematic.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
So it would be important to have that support network
around you.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
And social media has magnified everything that we experienced, well,
when I experienced when I was younger. You know, if
you were going through those adolescent years, they're tough enough anyway,
but now with a constant spotlight on you through social
media and self image and status and all.
Speaker 7 (15:50):
Of that, there's no real hiding from it.
Speaker 6 (15:52):
You can't get so it's almost like a constant pressure
that you can't get away from. So learning strategies to
deal with that and having the supported networks around becomes
really really important.
Speaker 8 (16:04):
Before I started looking up statistics, I made a phone
call to the guy in my town who's the president
of the local Little League association. He told me that
the Little League Association has been in existence since nineteen
fifty nine. Now, we couldn't come up with a statistically
credible estimation of the number of children who had played
in the league over all of those years, so for
(16:26):
the sake of argument, let's just say it was a lot.
They told me that in their almost sixty years of existence,
the number of children that had gone through their program
that he knew of that ended up playing Major League
Baseball was two.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I would all like to think that everyone can flourish
and succeed, but being really stick here, only a handful
of kids playing in their chosen sport today are actually
going to make it professionally, aren't they. So what's the
point of putting so much pressure on these teenagers?
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (16:58):
I think, Look, I love and it's great to see
people excel and do their best at it. But we
know the evidence shows in the United States with the
NFL and.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
The Premier league football academies.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
You know, it's something like, you know, these young people
aget signed up really at really young ages for these
premier league academies, and yeah, very few. We know from
the evidence that very few actually make it through to
professional ranks.
Speaker 7 (17:23):
So if you take the.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
Premier league football academies in the UK and you look
at the NFL, the amount of athletes who are signed
quite young and actually go on to play in the
professional game, I think it's about one to two percent
of young people who actually are signed up with football
academies in the UK.
Speaker 7 (17:41):
So very few people actually do make it through. You'd
have to ask the.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Question, why so much pressure and why so much investment
so young, and it sort of closing the door on
late developers. As youth develop at different stages, some develop
earlier than others, and that those late developers possibly not
selected early on because of their haven't developed physically as
fast as their peers. Possibly we're losing them from sport
(18:06):
as well. So it's a double wammy. The ones who
are in the system the majority don't make it, and
it closes the door on other people from actually entering
into the system.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
So I saw last week fifteen year old runner Sam
Ruth became the youngest person to ever run a sub
four minute mile. Now, this is obviously a major achievement
for him personally, but for the country as well. Where
do we strike that balance between supporting clear superstars like
Sam but not thrusting them into the spotlight so much
that it could negatively impact on them.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
Yeah, I've been following that.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
You know, that's an incredible performance from somebody who are
young and attract significant media attention.
Speaker 7 (18:44):
From Olympics point of view, the International Olympic.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
Committee commissioned about twenty five leading experts in youth development
from across the world, so scientists, physiologists, people with experiencing
coaching youth development sports psychologists.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
They came up with a consensus.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
Statement on what age is the right age when young
people should be going to the Olympics, and they couldn't
agree on an age. So what they did do was
identify all the challenges and barriers, some of them we've
talked about that do impact on young people, and they
came up with recommendations that would support somebody like Sam
for example, be a classic example of that. But it's
(19:21):
having the right people around them who understand the appropriate
training load for people going through the adolescence and they'll
go through various stages of growth spurts. We know that
during adolescence the risk of injury is much higher than
for other age groups. So it's having that knowledge around
them from the trainers and the people working with them
(19:42):
physically to understand what an appropriate training load is. Then
you also need some supportive parenting around them to help
guide them through the pressures that come with that. You know,
the school environment and everybody involved with them around them
needs to be providing a lot of support. Now, now
what I read about Sam, I don't know Sam. It
seems he doesn't have a very supportive environment around him
(20:03):
and that's great, but you know, not athlete is going
to have that, So yeah, there is a lot of
pressure on it and it needs to be. You just
need to support these people with a network of people
around them. That's a sports organizations, the cultures, xos, physiologists,
the nutritionists and that rock around service which helps them
navigate this time because he really is in the spotlight right.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Thanks for joining us, Simon.
Speaker 7 (20:25):
No problem, it's pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at NZ Herald, dot co dot MZ. The Front Page
is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is
also a sound engineer.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
behind the headlines.
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