St Peter's School host Big Day
6th May 2010 01:23PM
St Peter's School take on Cambridge High School in the third round of the 1st XV Division 1 competition on Saturday, with the match to be broadcast live on Sky Sport's Rugby Channel at 2.35pm, as part of Sky TV's Martin Crowe's initiative to show a secondary school game from around the country each weekend.
St Peter's coach Andrew Douglas said it was a great concept and he was delighted the school games would get the extra exposure.
"If you saw the crowd at last week's Auckland Grammer-MAGS [Mt Albert Grammar School] game there was 5000 people there, and the Chiefs can't pull those sort of crowds sometimes," Douglas said.
"There's always a lot of passion behind schoolboy rugby, from the boys themselves and parents, and school pride comes into play."
The two Waikato teams play for the Referees Trophy during round robin encounters, and although St Peter's beat them in last year's semifinal, Cambridge still have the trophy.
"For a community like Cambridge it's huge," Douglas said of the derby. "You've got your independent school versus your state school, you've got your town divided really on who it supports.
"Those sort of games are always close and are always played with a lot of passion and a lot of excitement."
He said his players were feeling a few extra nerves, knowing that many more sets of eyes would be on them this weekend.
"When they've got TV crews coming and interviewing them before the game it certainly hits home.
"The field's getting spraypainted with logos, there's scaffolding going up for camera structures.
"They know it's not exactly a typical game."
