Waikato Secondary Schools disqualified the South Waikato team but could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for Tokoroa High School said the school could not comment.<\/p>\n
Sport Waikato chief executive Matthew Cooper “supported organisations making tough calls”. Photo \/ Mark Taylor, Waikato Times<\/p>\n
The ban is backed by council-funded Sport Waikato and their chief executive Matthew Cooper who \u201csupported organisations making tough calls\u201d.<\/p>\n
A St Peter\u2019s-linked witness said one of their players had overheard a Tokoroa player saying \u201cI\u2019m going to come and get you\u201d before the final whistle.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure enough, the final whistle\u2019s blown this boy\u2019s just come up for no reason [and] just headbutted him. It was something that we had been expecting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Middle-aged men were barking behind the goalpost \u2013 specifically to the St Peter\u2019s goalkicker, according to Davison.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was in plain sight for everyone to see that behaviour. It\u2019s only an inch away from escalating into something bad and we\u2019ve seen plenty of stabbings, people getting punched in the side of the head and getting KO\u2019d,\u201d Davison said.<\/p>\n
The witness said spectators left \u201cas a pack\u201d because of the intimidating atmosphere, with Tokoroa spectators \u201cstaring them down\u201d and calling out threats.<\/p>\n
Both the witness and Davison agreed the issue was with a small number of Tokoroa players and supporters. Davison said the captain and multiple players approached him to apologise once tensions eased.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a real shame especially with a lot of those players [who] are just coming to play footy.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the witness said if the team wasn\u2019t disqualified, many other schools had been ready to boycott the competition with semi-finals around the corner.<\/p>\n
Simms Davison said referees had been copping flak in Tokoroa.<\/p>\n
Referees had also been copping flak in Tokoroa, according to Davison, who played over 50 games for the Chiefs.<\/p>\n
They\u2019d raised concerns about manning the whistle in the town before the season started, he said. During the season, refs \u201cwouldn\u2019t go there anymore\u201d because of the severity of abuse, leading to Tokoroa playing an abnormal number of away fixtures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s someone that\u2019s meant to be completely neutral, that doesn\u2019t have any other family there … as far as I\u2019m concerned, that was enough to get a team thrown out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morrinsville College\u2019s side had even forfeited their away game against Tokoroa after not getting a venue change to a neutral ground.<\/p>\n
The Tokoroa team\u2019s disqualification follows incidents involving other teams in the Waikato. <\/p>\n
Allegations of another Under-14 rugby fracas between St John\u2019s College and Fraser High School occurred in May, while Waikato Junior Rugby League cancelled all matches for a weekend to curb violence and abuse.<\/p>\n
Cooper, who has previously been vocal about delivering consequences to stamp out poor behaviour, said tough decisions have to be made to ensure the correct messaging gets across.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the All Blacks, it\u2019s not the Silver Ferns, it\u2019s not the Warriors. This is community school sport and that should be all about the experience has to be a good one and an enjoyable one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waikato Secondary Schools disqualified the South Waikato team but could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,1554,7818,144600,1558,4057,4596,21171,71,5267,305,260123,2959,2205,10543,111,139,69,3117,6327,275770,213,7187,1361,165,17160,275769],"class_list":["post-560382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-alleged","tag-allegedly","tag-barking","tag-been","tag-behind","tag-competition","tag-disqualified","tag-from","tag-goal","tag-have","tag-headbutt","tag-high","tag-involved","tag-match","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-post","tag-rugby","tag-schoolers","tag-sports","tag-team","tag-that","tag-their","tag-tokoroa","tag-under14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560382","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=560382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}