With all the publicity surrounding the futures of Gibbs and Fulton, we can take comfort from the talent to arrive at the Club from Keebra.
Francis Fifita from the coverage of the games last year looks like an outstanding prospect.
Welcome to Kiwi Park High on the Gold Coast
STEVE KILGALLON
Last updated 11:31 15/05/2011
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Some call it Kiwi Park. Some reckon they steal young New Zealand kids away at an early age and never return them. It's just a small, brick-built, state high school in a regular Gold Coast suburb.
"We're a tiny little school. We're not one of the wealthier ones. We got a gym built recently, but until then we had an old wire cage; we've got a couple of playing fields down the bottom," says PE teacher Greg Lenton dismissively.
But every day, Lenton fields at least a half-dozen emails, phone calls and DVDs from aspiring rugby league players from across Australia and beyond who want to study at Keebra Park State High.
For Keebra Park is where Benji Marshall went to school. And Greg Eastwood. And a stack of other past and present NRL players, including Jamaal Lolesi, Ben Te'o, Robert Lui and Rangi Chase.
With just 750 students on the roll, Keebra Park punch above their weight. They've been in four of the last five Australian national schoolboy finals. They've also dabbled in AFL (twice state champions), rugby union sevens (national champion) and touch (world champion).
So kids want to go there. About 40 of the 250 enrolled in the school's rugby league programme are New Zealanders, whose families make significant sacrifices to send them there. While the Wests Tigers, the NRL club who back the school, contribute to scholarships, no student escapes paying some fees and homestay costs. One Kiwi student's family all gave up their annual leave to work second jobs to pay his way.
"There's always been a little bit of feeling over there [New Zealand] that we're stealing their players, and I just can't come to grips with that," says Lenton, sitting in his office, surrounded by old jerseys, a montage of press clippings and framed photos many featuring a teenaged Marshall propped against the breeze block walls.
"The kids come out here, come into a really good programme that stresses hard work and fitness and we play against high-quality kids in a national comp ... but there's been that feeling for a while now, that we are stealing those players. But there are so many kids sitting around doing nothing. We're giving them an opportunity."
At first, Lenton would field desperate approaches from New Zealand kids. Then he began to chase them, and he now runs regular open trials around the country. "In those days, very few people realised their potential," he says. "I remember making the comment that these [Kiwi] boys are genetically designed to play the game and will end up dominating it, and people said no, no, no. But it's turned out to be true. They've fitted in very well here. They've always impressed me with a great value on family, and discipline, and respect for authority. They've really added to the ethos of the place."
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NONE MORE than Benji Marshall, Keebra Park's favourite son. His name is on the honours board in the foyer of the school's main building: Sports Achiever of the Year, 2004.
The story of the emergence of the most gifted league talent of his generation is remarkable, not least because it gives the lie to Keebra Park being some sort of football factory.
Marshall was on a school tourism trip from Whakatane High to the Gold Coast, when his school visited Keebra Park and was invited to join in a trial game. "So they gave us some boots, I jumped on the field, carved them up, and they said come back and have a scholarship," recounts Marshall, eyes twinkling.
Later, Lenton tells me: "He probably didn't tell you the full story: he chucked the boots on, he was absolutely bloody terrible, he got hooked." Marshall had never played rugby league before. With five minutes left of the game, Lenton relented, and threw Marshall back on. "The scrum packed just as he went on, he got the ball, stepped his way around the other team and scored. I thought `righto'."
That's why Lenton bridles at suggestions he steals kids. He says the ones he finds are the ones no one else wants. Dannevirke-raised Rangi Chase, who played for the Dragons, came "from a background that would make your hair curl". Gold Coast Titans centre Bodene Thompson had never played rugby league. Ben Murdoch-Masila, who made his NRL debut for the Tigers in last year's finals, came from a troubled, gang-related background, weighed 152kg when he joined the school and couldn't run a lap of the field. He was initially troublesome. Now, says Lenton proudly, the Tigers see him as a future leader: "And that's when I get a buzz, that these kids have changed themselves around."
Lenton often picks up kids he's seen in the background of another kid's showreel, or on a hunch, or a "quick 60-second look at them you get a feeling that there's something special. You see the look in their eyes they are desperate to have an opportunity. They have a dream".
TO BACK his assertion that he selects the roughest of rough diamonds, Lenton introduces me to Sa Fifita, a giant, chiselled 18-year-old from Otara in South Auckland, who looks like a bigger, stronger Israel Folau. Fifita will turn professional with the Tigers next year, but Lenton merrily describes Fifita as "clueless" when he first saw him. "But they are the ones I like to go for: the blank canvas."
Now, he says, Fifita will be the next Sonny Bill Williams. His brother's league team was heading to Waiwera Hot Springs for their end-of-season trip, and stopping off at one of Lenton's trial on the way. He grabbed his boots and went along for the ride. "I love it," Fifita says shyly. "I don't want to go home. The first couple of months is real tough, but you meet other Kiwi boys and get comfortable."
Lenton describes Manaia Billy-Rudolph as the next Marshall. From the picturesque town of Warkworth, 45 minutes north of Auckland, he'd never played league but was headed south for a touch tournament and heard that Keebra was trialing kids in Hamilton. "It's a school full of Kiwis: it's like being at home," he says.
First-team captain Nafoa Leapai is one of seven Keebra kids who rises at 4am and gets the first train to leave Brisbane's Roma St station each morning to be in the school gym by six. His friends think "it's a waste of time", but he came here to play football. The Auckland-born hooker hadn't heard of the school when they approached him at the age of 14, but soon picked up that this was an opportunity to be taken. "It's worth the trip," he says.
They work them hard at Keebra. The league students have three "sports specialisation" periods a week in class time, then train at 6.30am every Friday, and must complete three gym sessions in their own time. Matches are played state wide, meaning it's sometimes midnight before they get home. "The gym is always there," says Billy-Rudolph. "It never stops."
If they don't attend school and complete all assignments, they are stood down from the team. Marshall missed a state cup quarter-final for skipping class. Some are permanently excluded, which pains Lenton. "Kids these days struggle to find that line in the sand. But that's what he wants more than anything, he wants to know where his boundaries are, they don't get too many of them any more." And Lenton's law extends outside the school gates. "If they played up outside, it would reflect really badly on us and Wests Tigers," he says.
But Marshall also stresses how much the Keebra Park teachers helped him, staying after school as late as 7pm to give him extra teaching to make up for classes missed while he was in Sydney playing for the Tigers. "We make them appreciate that even if they have a good career it's 10 years, and they have to work for 40 after it," says Lenton.
HIS COACHING philosophy is sparse. When he talks about Marshall, he says his biggest challenge was preventing anyone from coaching the magic out of his game: one representative coach said Marshall wouldn't even make his club side without major changes. "I believe that we over-coach kids," he concludes. "I think coaches are over-rated in our game."
What he does is mentor them. Marshall is effusive about his impact: "He taught me all the principles, the basics of how to play rugby league, how to think like a half, how to play like a half, got me away from playing touch and took all the habits from rugby out of me," he says. "He [Lenton] turned me into a league player.
"He also taught me to be mentally tougher, how to handle outside influences. He really took me under his wing, and nurtured me through school, and really started off my career in football, pointed me to the right manager, and to the Tigers. Every single decision I made at school, he was behind me."
Greg Lenton has taught at Keebra Park for three decades, but he had stopped coaching the school football team when his son was born in 1995. The school virtually stopped playing the game, and the roll suffered a corresponding drop until the principal asked him to kickstart the game again.
Then he took a new approach, asking NRL clubs if they would back him, in return for cherrypicking the best kids for scholarships. A decade ago, that was a novel idea, and only one club, Canberra Raiders, said yes. The deal only lasted a year, but it was enough to pique the interest of the Tigers, who quickly replaced them. He says his programme now extending to eight teams across various competitions would fold without their input. In return, they've been rewarded with first call on a swag of the best juniors in the country.
But Lenton is stoic on one point: he refuses to allow his students to leave, NRL contracts or not, before they've completed their grade 12 certificate at 18. He says 17 year olds are too immature to cope with the pressures of professional football. Marshall was no exception not prepared at 17, ready for the big time a year later. He proudly relates that when Marshall recently faced assault charges, he called Lenton to apologise for any negative impact it might have on the school.
"If they go straight into a club just with raw ability, they won't make it," he declares. "If they make mistakes, they won't survive. If they make their mistakes here, then when we've finished, they will be the complete package. And they understand that it is 90% about what you do on the field, and only 10 per cent on simple ability."
Despite all the trophies, Lenton says he and the eight other teachers involved keep investing their after-hours time not for the joy of seeing yet another boy make his NRL debut but in seeing kids turn out good.
"People see it as all about football, but in reality, it's not," he considers. "It's about keeping boys at school during a crucial period of their life. It's very rare a boy wants to be at school, they are usually forced to be there. But these boys want to be here, and while they are, maybe even without realising it, they get an education."
- Sunday Star Times
