I think that Dr Hawkes is still there. The new guy probably there too in some sort of transition process?
This has been coming fro a while at Kings re soccer v rugby numbers. The last 4 years now have seen more soccer boys in 13s than rugby boys.
Just like at Shore and just like the game of rugby in Australia as a whole, none of this is instantaneous. It takes years (as does the recovery).
I have a boy in the 13s at kings and is a boarder. There are twice as many year 7 boarders this year than there were last year and most are country boys. The under 13s this year go down to the Es, when I was there 30 years ago Fs was common with the occasional Gs. Back then there were about 100 boarders of each year group of about 150, now there are 50 boarders of a year group of 210+.
There are a lot more soccer teams at kings than rugby teams now yes, but this is mostly due to there being a much higher proportion of multi cultural students than there used to be. As pointed out the lower number of rugby players is highly correlated to the lower number of traditional country boarders. It's not really due to kids deciding to play soccer over rugby that otherwise would have played rugby, they are kids that were never exposed to rugby.
With regards to the u13s, their performance isn't an indication of rugby being in decline at the school, it's just that their 13s aren't an especially strong group, it's just how the dice rolled this year. That's despite there being some extremely talented players.
I'm not really trying to make a specific point here, just running the numbers and putting some clarity to some other comments.