People wonder why New Zealand remains so successful in the footy world. Perhaps it’s quite simple: let the kids play. And let them dream!
With our little boys [Robbie, Charlie and Jake] playing our Saturday mornings were busy and the weeks were busy on the block. But I did coach the Northland Vikings side for a couple of games with Grant Eagan.
While coaching and over the next four years we attended as many Northland games as we could. We’d pick up a load of $1 pies from Georgie pies and sit on the hill to watch the games.
As the kids got older we’d throw them over the fence where they’d sit against the tin wall that surrounded the track and field. They’d bang on the tin when the action heated up, like we did when we were kids, and have an awesome time.
(From L-R) Charlie, Robbie and Jake Abel, sons of Robbie, were fine recruits for Gordon Highlanders in 2020. Pic: Gordon Highlanders.
After the games everyone was on the field with balls in hand: kids, parents, players. The kids would play for ages on the field after the game. They’d be repeating the moves they’d seen during the game and dream of the ties they’d score, or tackles they’d make in years to come. It was a breeding ground for future stars.
Some of my greatest footy memories are playing footy with the boys on Okara Park after these games.
Back when I was playing Grant was playing, too. Not sure who he played for but he was a solid player on the edge of the Northland squad. Don’t think he actually got there because we had a few All Blacks around at the time. But he could play and the word was we were related, although I’ve never worked out how.
The two of us were asked to coach this Northland Vikings side which was a great honour. The team was selected from players across Northland that had missed top squad but were thereabouts.
It was a Barbarians type atmosphere where you just had a go but you were always focused on winning games. We played the Northland top side and an equivalent Auckland side. Lost both in close encounters. But it was great fun.
They played as curtain raisers to NPC games.
The differences in skill and ability between regions, perceived or real, have always been a part of Northland footy.
It’s no different to many other provinces and competitions around the footy world.
You have the bigger centres in any regional area that typically have the bigger numbers of players, more people putting their hands up to help coach, and more volunteers to do the unseen grunt work behind the scenes.
The net result of having more of all of these things should and usually means you have stronger teams that win more often than not.
But every now and then a team from a smaller regional area will trump their bigger stronger cousins. But you need a core group of skilled, hard-working people you can build a team around.
Pressure was on Northland rugby to do more for junior footy. To give regional areas a chance to prove themselves against the bigger schools and teams in Whangarei. So Northland rugby decided that the U18 competition would be province wide.
When our mate Hoani Hippolite moved from the Waikato to Kaikohe he hooked up with the Owaewai club. The club is a few kays out of Kaikohe and is the home of the Woodmans, including All Blacks Fred and Kawhena, and Portia, a 7s legend.
Portia Woodman of Northlands and New Zealand burning Ellia Green of Warringah Rats and Australia. Pic: rugbydump.com
They had been a dominant club in the Bay of Islands club competition for a long while and Hoani fit right in at two, six or wherever he was needed. At heart he was a typical front-rower and figured he should be playing 10!
His playing days were supposedly done as were mine. Contestable Hippolite was, and still is 35 years after his arrival, the local community officer.
He knew all the kids in the community and they knew him. While they’d flee from most cops, they gravitated to him.
Even if they had been doing the wrong thing he had such a good connection with the kids of the community they’d give him the time of day whenever he asked.
Constable Hoani Hippolite (back) with family. Pic: Stuff.co.nz
Northland college 1st XV was a powerhouse of school footy in the north in its early days. When it was an active agricultural boarding school. Many of our uncles attended as boarders in the early days before heading off to church college in Hamilton after it opened. Northland College hadn’t seen much 1st XV success in recent years.
This is where the strands of this story come together. We’d both basically finished playing. Hoani knew the local kids through his work in the community and I knew some of them through my Vikings and coaching U16s.
We knew there was enough talent there to win this new Northland-wide U18 competition. They just needed coaching and direction and we figured we could do that. So we put our hands up and got the job. Not sure the college knew what they’d agreed too! We came from a college where the 1st XV ran the streets together at 6am - and didn’t lose too many games ever.
So our expectations were pretty high.
Maybe there’s something in that, too!
Related: Pride and prejudice: Australian rugby has a problem with perception and reality
Related: It's not all black: Tony Abel on rugby and identity
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