Tyrone Campbell: NZ Junior Rugby Festival founder on the event this weekend in Taupo

Junior Rugby is taking over Taupo this weekend.  

120 teams and over 10,000 supporters are flocking to Owen Delany Park for the New Zealand Junior Rugby Festival by Global Games. The teams feature from almost all provinces in New Zealand, as well as two teams from Australia. 

D'Arcy spoke with event founder Tyrone Campbell to learn all about it. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the All Sport Breakfast podcast with Darcy
Wildgrave from News Talk sedb Let's.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Move to Junior Rugby much more exciting taking over Tope
over the weekend. One hundred and twenty teams, ten thousand supporters,
Owen Delaney Parker's where the action is at almost every
province in New Zealand as involved. We're going to be
joined now what we are is here. Tyrone Campbell is
the founder of the festival, is going to tell us
about the event that's happening this weekend.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Get a Tyrone, get a Darcy. How are your mate?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm excited about the weekend, but not stressed about the weekend,
which I presume you will be considering what you've bitten
off this Junior Rugby Festival.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
What have you got?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
One hundred and twenty teams, ten thousand supporters, easy, bro.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
It's a lot easier it was than sixteen years ago.
That's for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Sixteen years ago. This is when you founded this. So
the growth in sixteen years is it?

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Kind? Is it done?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Look like accelerated the last handful of years? A slow build?
How's this developed? Tyrone?

Speaker 3 (01:10):
If I take you back a step back from sixteen
years ago.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
So I'm i oi up in the highlands of Scotland,
camping in a place called glen Coe when my ancestors
has once roamed and a few whiskey's deep thinking what
I was going to do when I came home, and
I don't know, I had a epiphany or I don't
know what you'd call it, but decided I'll come back
and create a grassroots tournament for kids.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
I mean, I wasn't much of a rugby player myself.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
In any given season, you could probably count the number
of plays I made in one hand, and back then, represent.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Of sport was pretty pretty big.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
So I wanted to create saying for the ninety nine
percent of kids like me that never got that opportunity
to travel and play teams from around the country and
around the world. So I came back to n Z,
chucked my dog and the car drove around the country.
Manas convinced a whole bunch of clubs to trust a
guy that'd never met before to send their kids to
an event that'd never run up in Turpoor back in
twenty ten, I remember I wrote a whole bunch of

(02:08):
my family and that opening morning when we did the registration.
I've got Auntie on the scales and Mom up in
the kitchen, and before we knew it, there were hundreds
of kids flooding over the embankments and all over the place.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
I thought, what the hell have I done in the
back end.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
It was an absolute disaster, and I thought that would
never run again. The next day we just had a
heap of calls from the club saying, oh man, that
was awesome, Can we come back again next year? So,
I mean, out of those clubs that came the first year,
the likes of Pons and be nat up A, Saint
Michael's Christian chief, See they're still coming back.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
All these years later, and plus a whole lot more.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
I think this year, across our three events, we've got
twenty four percent of all Raby clubs involved.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Wow, why do you think it's accelerated like it has?
You said it started off as an absolute shambles. It
was born on the Highlands over a couple of whiskey.
So how did it manage to drop that cloak of
crazy and get to where it is today?

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Tyrone?

Speaker 4 (03:00):
We've just I mean, we're just focused on the same
kind of values that we had from the start just
around the enjoyment, sportsmanship and just empowering young people. I
mean pretty much everyone involved in the Global Games because
it has a day job, and as a volunteer they're coaching, managing,
or refereeing and sports. So we understand what it's like
at Nicole Face at grassroots and you know, the clubs

(03:22):
absolutely love it, and I mean that's just a testament
of how many clubs keep coming back year after year when.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
You organize something like this. And you mentioned you touched
on the people that help the support crew enormous, like
ten thousand fans and one hundred and twenty odd teams.
How many people are helping sort this out.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
Logistically, we've got about one hundred and twenty three people
helping out everywhere from parking to waste of vendors, medical crew, referees, volunteers,
teams in the kitchen, and it's just growing. I mean,
the volunteers that come and give up their time are
just great soul of the earth people and they're really
kind of buying too, the cop opper of what we're

(04:02):
trying to kind of do. And you know, the energy
at the event is just awesome.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Everyone gets it, you know, we're here for the here
for the kids.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
The reality is does see that most of these kids
here aren't going to play MPC, they're not going to
play Super rugby and certainly not going to be international stars,
though some of them will.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
So this is this is the this.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
Is their moment to shine, This is the this is
their opportunity. For a lot of the kids, they haven't
even left their home region before. So you're getting big
amounts of support. You know, we've got teams from right
across the country in Australia, so you know they're bringing
large amounts of their family that want to come down
and be a part of it as well.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
And I believe also you're being very environmentally responsible with
this event. It's a zero waste event. It's just a
mix drama to lug around.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
Yeah, it is, and we haven't always been that way,
to be completely honest. I remember twenty nineteen we actually
ran in here and so forth and I was so embarrassing.
The reason I was, we had whole bunch of skip
buns and the council called me afterwards and said, oh,
look you're rubbish is blowing all over the place and
it's making a hell of them, and I mean we're
very lucky to run our events and places like Topor

(05:09):
and Queenstown and some of the.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Jewels in this beautiful country. And I was so embarrassed.

Speaker 4 (05:15):
I teamed up for an organization called Without Waste and
they have just been absolutely phenomenal and it's been an
education piece. I mean they hand sort of every piece
of waste that we had in the first year and
then slightly start educating the teams to where we are
today where all the vendors are using reusables or plants
made of leafs and no disposable coffee cups. And so

(05:38):
again it's just an extra layer. And I mean the
kids get it. They live and breathe this stuff. It's
more around the education piece of the supporters and the
parents to be honest.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
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