{"id":514355,"date":"2026-07-07T16:11:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/514355\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T16:11:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:11:25","slug":"auckland-teen-forced-to-play-rugby-for-another-school-to-get-time-on-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/514355\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland teen forced to play rugby for another school to get time on field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">An Auckland teenager has been given dispensation to play rugby for another school after repeatedly being left on the sideline by his own coaches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Despite regularly going to training and travelling to every game around the city, the 14-year-old only got 20 minutes of game time in total across 11 games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">New Zealand Rugby policy states every player not playing at 1st XV level is required to get at least half a game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">But after speaking to coaches and the school, the teenager has ended up playing for another school in the same competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Speaking to Morning Report, the boy&#8217;s father said a lot of effort had gone into making sure his son attended training four days a week and was prepared on the sidelines every weekend, despite hardly ever getting any game time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;We show up after half an hour&#8217;s drive or more just to find out that our son&#8217;s not playing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;Why doesn&#8217;t anyone let us know beforehand because that could have saved us a lot of time especially when you have more kids that you had to get up early in the morning and travel, just to find that he&#8217;s standing on the sidelines once again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;It&#8217;s just robbing him of game time for no reason,&#8221; his father said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Since the boy has played for another school, he&#8217;s played two full games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;He just feels happy as. How any kid will feel just to get the game time. In his second game he got player of the match,&#8221; his father told John Campbell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">RNZ is not naming the child or the school, but numerous attempts to contact the school&#8217;s principal via email, text and phone call remained unanswered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Auckland teenager has been given dispensation to play rugby for another school after repeatedly being left on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-514355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514355","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=514355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}