RugbyFuture
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Knocking on heaven's door
PHIL LUTTON
January 29, 2010 - 8:03AM
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/knocking-on-heavens-door-20100128-n1jh.html?autostart=1
Despite its popularity, rugby league remains taboo at Queensland's nine elite education institutions, where union rules supreme. Phil Lutton asks whether the working-class code can ever return to the manicured fields of the Great Public Schools.
The gleaming motorcade of Audis and BMWs seductively purring their way along Mowbray Terrace on any given weekday morning indicates two things. Firstly, if you're about to purchase a luxury car, you just can't go wrong with black. It's timeless. The second is that it's a school day at Churchie.
Anglican Church Grammar School, which straddles both sides of leafy Oaklands Parade in inner-city East Brisbane, is abuzz with activity during the morning drop-off period.
Mums and dads, not all of them riding in European-engineered comfort, deposit their boys for a day of scholastic and moral enlightenment at one of the city's most expensive houses of learning.
The boys filter past the burnt-red brick buildings, which barricade from view the hallowed playing fields that have witnessed fierce rivalries since the early 1900s, many which have grown robustly in stature over frosty lagers at Old Boy reunions.
Like Churchie's eight fellow members of the Great Public Schools (GPS) Association, this is a rugby union heartland; an unbreachable outpost of the old amateur code that lives and breathes the game they play in heaven, which in turn wouldn't draw too many complaints if it resembled a trouncing of Nudgee or Terrace.
League may have been flogged as the greatest game of all but within the oasis of rugby conservatism that is the GPS, it's mostly a non-event. Ipswich Grammar School, for example, has played league in non-GPS fixtures but the closest Churchie gets is offering a tipping competition for old boys through its website.
It's been 82 years since the last game of league was played between GPS schools, a local Ivy League of sorts that consists of Churchie, Brisbane Boys' College, Brisbane Grammar School, Brisbane State High School, St Joseph's College (Gregory Terrace), Ipswich Grammar School, St Joseph's Nudgee College, The Southport School and Toowoomba Grammar School.
More than three-quarters of a century later, Union is not only surviving but thriving amid cloistered halls that drip tradition. The GPS system has become a production line for Super 14 stocks and the Wallabies, while traditional schoolboy derbies can boil the blood like a Collingwood-Carlton bash at the MCG.
Outside the school walls the tectonic plates are rumbling in a different direction. Union, endlessly mired in its own muddled dictionary of laws and rules, is battling for fans, viewers and money while league is riding the crest of a wave, sent surging forth by new-age superstars Greg Inglis and Jarryd Hayne and stoic greats like Darren Lockyer.
As it stands, union remains the only rugby code on offer in the elite private schools. But can it remain blinkered to the rise of its blue-collar cousin forever?
Pick a code, any code...
Karmichael Hunt sure is good at keeping secrets. Not a bad poker face either. The one he unveiled in July last year was a doozy. He blindsided an entire country of footy fans with an announcement most people initially dismissed as a breakfast radio gag.
After playing rugby as a Churchie schoolboy before a brilliant career for the NRL's Brisbane Broncos, Queensland and Australia, he was now trying his hand at AFL by signing for the new team on the Gold Coast.
If the lines between the football codes were already blurred, Hunt's defection meant they were now an abstract finger painting. He had played AFL before - at school. The code returned to the GPS in 1995 as a term-three option that didn't clash with the rugby fixtures.
So if AFL, a sport which admittedly has a long tie with Queensland grammar schools after being played at Ipswich as long ago as 1870, can pass muster in the GPS, can league ever leap the still formidable cultural brick walls and stage a return?
"AFL is now firmly entrenched in the GPS system and I've got no doubt rugby league will at some stage, as long as it's offered in a different term from rugby," says Queensland rugby great and Gregory Terrace favourite son David Croft.
Croft might be a surprising candidate to be espousing a liberal attitude to the take-up of league in the GPS. As a fearless warrior at the breakdown in his 116 caps for Queensland, he is a dedicated rugby man who has spilled enough blood for the code to clean out a fleet of Red Cross vans.
He believes league would pose no threat to the sacred rugby traditions of the GPS. On the contrary, he could only see league enhancing a school's rugby ability and making future stars even more attractive to talent scouts.
"You acquire great skills from rugby league. It's only going to help their development," Croft says.
"If there is a term set aside to play rugby league, I've got no doubt it can only aid and assist the development of rugby union players through the state and the GPS system."
Still, the shallow, stereotypical caricatures of the codes remain a huge stumbling block. League is the bogan sport played by state schools, bushies and butcher-striped country Catholics while rugby is the refined pastime of blazer-wearing mauls layered with lawyers or surgeons. Most likely, there are equal parts truth and myth to both assumptions.
Croft believes those perceptions have changed and it may be time for the old guard of GPS to at least consider re-admitting a sport that was, from 1918 to 1928, the GPS code du jour when a destabilised Queensland Rugby Union temporarily fell flat.
"I imagine some of the people would be of that sort and that mind (to oppose league). But we all evolve over time. Rugby league's a great game. Obviously I'm a rugby union boy and will remain that way. But I think it's (league) a great sport and it offers plenty for rugby union players as well," Croft says.
"I don't think it's an us-versus-them scenario. I'd be surprised if they look at it that way. Maybe they will. Maybe there's an old guard that sees things that way.
"But maybe there is a time when you open the doors - and if you can fit it into the school term given there are a lot of sports on offer - then sure, let's give it a go and see how the take-up is.
"I don't think there is as much a divide any more as there once was. In society in general a lot of barriers have been broken down. I think it's the same with rugby codes and all codes in general.
"Sure, it was very much us-verses-them with union and league or any other rival sport. I don't think that's the case any more. Karmichael Hunt is across three codes now. You've just got to accept that and get on with it."
Many rivers to cross...
For league to get a foothold into the GPS would take a bigger comeback than Fonda Metassa, the `Golden Greek' who famously leaped out of the back of an ambulance as it was being driven off Lang Park to keep playing for Norths in a league game against Redcliffe in the 1960s.
Peter Hauser, the principal at Toowoomba Grammar, gives an honest assessment about the potential for the code's return. He believes the rugby heritage within the boutique schools is overpowering, to the fatal detriment of league's prospects.
With parents paying top dollar to enrol their boys and the school trading on a carefully cultivated reputation, it's a perfectly reasonable standpoint.
"My view is that's it's (union) too strong. We see union as an international game and I think the gentlemanly way that it's played, off the field, is in pretty stark contrast to some of the league antics. I think union is too well established to consider league," Hauser says.
"We don't have the critical mass of students to have the two rugby codes. We've already got football (soccer) and rugby union and if another one came in, I think it would be AFL.
"I think the tradition is one but the other is student numbers. AFL are already into it and my view AFL would come in (as an official GPS sport) before league."
Brian Hain, director of sport at The Southport School, says interest in rugby league is growing in line with the popularity of the NRL. An increasing number of teachers have league backgrounds, while a healthy percentage of students play club league in addition to their school rugby duties.
He says it's more an already dense sporting calendar, rather than social attitudes, that is plotting against league's chances at the sprawling TSS campus.
"We're happy with rugby league and the club involvement and dad's being passionate about the game. To fit in another season, I probably can't see it. It's very busy as it is at the moment," Hain says.
His rugby stars play league outside school hours with his blessing and Hain believes they come back better for the extra exposure givent the rapid-fire nature of the GPS rugby premiership.
"Our GPS seasons are very short - probably too short - so given they are getting an extra game of competitive football, there is some benefit," he says.
Former Queensland Reds coach and Brisbane Grammar old boy Phil Mooney is another who can't see change storming through the gates like a thundering pack of forwards, even if he can see a mounting case for league to be taken off the taboo list.
"There's obviously the long tradition of rugby and the perceived competition between the two codes. I know the GPS system is one that doesn't readily makes change. Downlands (Toowoomba) have been playing everyone on their competition bye since day dot but for some reason, they're never admitted into the GPS," Mooney says.
"I know there are kids at the private schools that league is their main game. They play league on Friday night and play for their school on Saturday. Young blokes like playing both and there would certainly be enough that put their hand up to play rugby league.
"I've dealt with the Queensland schools and I know they are very, very staunch rugby people. You'd have to put a pretty compelling case to them to get league into the private schools."
Still, Mooney knows better than most things can change. Fast. After being sacked by the Reds last season, he has found himself working as a backs coach with the Brisbane Broncos before taking up a posting to mentor Otago in New Zealand's NPC.
He has no objection to league in the GPS and warns the QRU not to take what has been a fertile petrie dish of rugby bodies for granted. It's not just league that is pecking the eyes out of the talent pool.
"I think people's attitudes to particular sports are changing. And the lines are blurred now and players change codes. I don't think it's beyond the realms," Mooney says.
"To give an example, when I went to Brisbane Grammar, there were probably 25 rugby teams and five soccer teams. Now those numbers are a lot closer. Twenty-five years ago, the thought of 20 soccer teams at Brisbane Grammar was considered not possible.
"The QRU, to a degree, have maybe taken the GPS schools as a bit of a given. I know the Western Force has got in with Nudgee. You've got other rugby teams getting into our traditional strongholds - there's no reason why a rugby league club can't get schools involved in those competitions.
"I know the Broncos train out on the Grammar fields. Norths, when it was the Melbourne feeder club, used to train at Nudgee. There are established relationships there.
"If you can see anything from recent QRU history, you can't take anything for granted. You can't assume that they are rugby and are always going to be rugby. I think that's going to be one of the issues."
Two seasons in one school...
At Padua College in Kedron, a suburb of Brisbane's northside, sportsmaster Scott Maguire is three days into term and already dealing with parents wondering if their young star is going to play First 15 rugby. They might play First 13 league as well - Maguire is the coach of both teams.
While not in the GPS, Padua is part of the Associated Independent Colleges (AIC), a group that includes respected rugby nurseries like Marist Ashgrove, the foundry that forged Wallabies like John Eales and Daniel Herbert.
Padua offers both codes to its boys, with the catch that to play league in term three, you must play rugby in term two. Maguire has no doubt it strengthens both programs and gives talented boys - the school has a number of active NRL players including David Stagg and David Shillington - every chance of post-school success.
"My philosophy is if we can offer it, offer it. Part of being at a school is to give the boys every opportunity to make something out of their life, whether it's academic or music or sport or whatever," Maguire says.
"We've got seven kids in the past 10 years that are in the NRL system. If we had not given them the opportunity to play rugby league for Padua, they may never have been seen.
"We don't play a lot of league. But we've been lucky where the league coaches and rugby coaches get on pretty well and don't have a chip on their shoulder about either game.
"We do all our pre-season together. When they come back next week, they'll train as one group. If they want to play rugby league, they have to play AIC rugby union. That's just the conditions here. We don't have too many issues."
For all his efforts to build bridges over the rivalries between the rugby codes, Maguire encounters resistance on a regular basis. Some league diehards would be happy if Padua quit rugby altogether - "That's not going to happen" - while the example of Marist College Ashgrove entering rugby league's Confraternity Shield, then withdrawing due to a reported backlash from the rugby faithful, shows the sword cuts deep on both sides.
And while the rugby codes bicker, the AFL could be laughing all the way to the bank.
"It's always made me laugh that the league or rugby people don't seem to mind we offer AFL. Nobody seems to look sideways at AFL. I think it's just getting every kid the opportunities," Maguire says.
"You talk to recruitment managers from all three sports, they're not looking for a player from league or union, they're looking for a very good athlete."
Farking mungos
