\u201cTeam sport is a great thing for our society and for our community… older people just need to butt out and let kids play the game and enjoy the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The witness said two Fraser High School parents assaulted three St John\u2019s College players. Photo \/ Christel Yardley<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do feel some responsibility for it as well… we certainly offer our vocal support for anyone who is trying to clamp down on this type of behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both schools did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday, but a St John\u2019s-linked witness to the altercation said tensions between the teams arose after the referee disallowed a try.<\/p>\n
The match was then paused just before the final whistle by both coaches to calm things down between the players, but the agro started up again.<\/p>\n
\u201cPushing and shoving\u201d ensued between players, which was when a player was headlocked by a parent from the opposing side, the witness said.<\/p>\n
Two further players were punched by parents, according to the witness. One player sustained a black eye while the other two were \u201croughed up\u201d.<\/p>\n
A police spokesperson said: \u201cPolice\u2019s School Community Officers are aware of the report and working with the schools involved\u201d.<\/p>\n
Waikato Rugby was approached for comment on why the incident wasn\u2019t made public in their earlier warning and what consequences could follow for those involved.<\/p>\n
Amy Marfell said the decision for sanction belongs with the schools themselves. Photo \/ Christel Yardley<\/p>\n
\u201cWaikato Rugby are not responsible for the running of the secondary school rugby competition – this is overseen and run by a secondary school governance group and as a result, the incident is being dealt with through the appropriate channels, which are the schools themselves,\u201d Waikato Rugby\u2019s chief executive Amy Marfell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaikato Rugby do not publicise any sanctionable incidents that occur in the competitions that we run, these are dealt with by appropriate judiciary processes and we expect that this instance would be dealt with by the schools and the governance group under their own processes for breaches of the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important that this incident and all incidents of this type are dealt with appropriately to ensure the safety of all participants, coaches, volunteers and spectators in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWaikato Rugby has a clear position on this type of behaviour, which we have articulated, and we will work with any school or club to support them to deal with these matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTeam sport is a great thing for our society and for our community… older people just need to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9526,1975,5432,1061,6288,218796,2959,671,13620,10543,111,139,69,3766,105,218794,6327,312,4062,6649,213,218795,8238,810,1524,3603],"class_list":["post-426573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-another","tag-at","tag-between","tag-children","tag-hamilton","tag-headlock","tag-high","tag-incident","tag-leading","tag-match","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-parents","tag-punched","tag-roughed","tag-rugby","tag-says","tag-school","tag-schools","tag-sports","tag-u14","tag-under","tag-up","tag-waikato","tag-witness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}