Year 12 & 13’s Careers are Taking a Hit

I have struggled to get people to jump on board with me when it comes to High School Top 200 even though this benefit and advantage focuses on High School kids. As you guys all know High School Top 200 has only just started with Rugby but is meant to widen out to 11 other Sports for both Boys and Girls to create opportunity for a career in Sports My Goal and focus to this day is for the purpose of creating more opportunity for High School Sportsmen and woman to be seen, scouted, recruited and then signed. Right from the start in 2012 when I began working on this, I wanted to move onto recording games and have highlights clips for all players from all sports documenting their progress from Year 11 right through to Year 13. My first Goal is to help the players find opportunities.

I have found it so hard trying to get big companies to jump on board and see the vision that I see in helping our Athletes to get noticed and seen. This is something that not only the Companies and Corporations fail to see, but also NZ Rugby, Schools and Coaches as well dont see the benefit of this because of all different reasons. For me, I never cared to much for where the player goes or what he/she decides as long as it is something he/she and his/her parents want to do with the opportunities. I dont believe in pushing boys to play Rugby or keep them in Rugby, if they want to move to NRL or to go College in the States for Rowing or Volleyball then great, I just want to find them the opportunities.

Being a fan of American Sports like NFL, NBA as well as at College level of those sports I have always seen what their recruiting system is like and what it can do for them getting their footage out there. Here in NZ though, for some reason they dont want to do that, and I wonder why? Because the more players we see the more that player can get opportunities to do what they love as a career in Sports.

The reasons that I have been given from people that work in NZ Rugby is that they dont want other Codes like the NRL, ARL and overseas Clubs to see the talent we have and make an offer and this was back in 2013 when I was told. When I first heard that I thought right away that they see it as a business and not trying to help out the players, and I can kind of understand that in away, but now everything they do and decide when it comes to School Boy 1st XV Rugby is all business based nothing about helping the boys. Now as we see how Rugby is going in 2020, we have found out that we can not match other countries offers  when it comes to contracts and that is why they didn’t want to show our talent.

We can thank SKY TV for the coverage they have when covering the 1st XV Comps in NZ and it is a great Product. However, SKY can only really cover one game a week if that because of financial cost of Production. What they dont do at SKY though is provide context for the game they present and what it means on a National scale. They dont talk about how good the players real are and what level of talent they have in terms of the placing in the Top 200 National Rankings in our country.

Now to be fair it is not their job to know because they are just presenting a game, but to the Coaches, Scouts, Recruits who watch the games, this stuff is real important. Players get noticed a lot on SKY but the talent level isnt explained and the context of the level of both teams on the field is not put to scale. I love watching the games because SKY do such a good job at presenting it but they need my help in the back ground to really give the Scouts, Recruiters and Coaches the info they need to make offers to the boys and the right players.

The other side of this is the Coaches at schools that dont LIVE Stream or film their games to show their followers, because of a few reasons. Like I have said from the start everything I do is for opportunities for the players. Smaller schools and in some cases the big schools now are having their best players moving to the schools they want to attend. Coaches dont want to put their games out there because they dont want their Year 11’s and Year 12 players to be seen and then scooped up by another school. As I do understand this thinking the other side of it is that, if you dont have a SKY game that kid may not get seen at all and wont get offers from outside of their Region. Coaches have the resources as well to really promote their Rugby Program, the players and the School itself and this is how it can be done.

If a Coach went to the Media Class teacher and worked on a Project together to Promote the players and get the Media Class students to put their skills to work with video editing and computer animation it will boost the schools profile. If you want to go further use the footage to create a highlight tape for a player and find a kid who makes beats and put it all into one and you have a school Project all done by students who can claim their work and also get picked up in other industries. Why do they not want to do that? The fear of losing players? but it is the Coaches that they will lose players, but not the fear of the players getting the Scholarship offer or contract.

This year is not just rough for the Year 13’s but also for the Year 12’s who only have one year to prove themselves and only have one year of 1st XV Rugby. Year 12 is a big introduction for most players and it gives them a feel for 1st XV level Rugby so the next year they can really make a statement. 2019 has gone and 2020 is in danger but hangs on with a HOPE. Our Year 13’s cant show their skills to Scouts, Recruiters and Agents and if your school wasn’t recording games last year they will not have footage to help your case. Recruiters, Scouts and Agents are now blowing up my phone asking me for my help and advice even more now and asking what footage I might have from me attending game and filming on my phone. Come on people “Help me Help Players” these poor boys now have no footage to show because everyone is being greedy thinking they are losing out instead of thinking that players gets another opportunity.