By Stu Walmsley.
Geelong’s Gaiji Koyama is only 15 but, after a decade playing for the Rams, he could be considered the club’s youngest old boy.
He’ll be rubbing shoulders with the real thing in mid-June this year when many of the most venerable Rams gather to celebrate the club’s 90th anniversary, a long history which began in 1929 at Kardinia Park, a venue right at the core of Geelong’s sporting landscape.
The ground has been the home of the Geelong Cats VFL/AFL club since the early 1940s, and rugby has been pushed to the periphery since those first games at the geographical and spiritual heart of this port city, an hour’s drive south west of Melbourne.
But Koyama, who has played for the Rams since he was five, is indicative of how the club is muscling its way back into the public eye.
For the first time in their history, it has teams playing every age group from under 6s to under 16s, in a junior sporting landscape where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to engage kids in their late teens.
That the Rams have managed it in an Australian Rules Football stronghold, and has an under 16s team for the first time in a decade, is evidence of a successful strategy to increase visibility and promote rugby as a viable alternative for kids who don’t fit the AFL mould.
“You can see that growth, it’s come a long way, some nights I turn around and see how many numbers are here and I’m like; ‘wow, something’s actually happening down here’,” says under 16s head coach Shaun Preston, who played fly half in Geelong’s most recent senior premiership in 2015.
“I’m starting to see now with our juniors that people are actually catching on to this.
“You need to be a specific body type for AFL, but we’re finding that some of these bigger kids are realising there’s actually a home for them here.
“They can excel in a sport, and they don’t have to be that tall, lean, fit kid.
“That’s the positive message that we’re trying to get out there to those guys who are sitting on the fringes and the bench at the AFL games; ‘mate, you could be playing an 80-minute game of footy every week’.”
Helping in no small way with this visibility is the club’s new $3.68 million purpose-built home ground, which it shares with Geelong Buccaneers American Football club in the northern suburb of Corio,
The Buccs start their season as rugby winds up in August, making them the perfect co-tennant, and the development includes two floodlit and irrigated playing fields, an eye-catching multi-use pavilion, kitchen and gender neutral changerooms.
In terms of distance, it’s just across the road from the club’s former home at the defunct Flinders Peak Secondary College, but the new Hendy Street Reserve facility feels like another world to club veterans.
“Yeah, it (the old field) was just out the back there, a dark, gloomy, freezing cold thing,” says Preston, who played his first senior rugby at Cottesloe in Perth, one of the nation’s most iconic club grounds.
“Coming from Cottesloe, think about that backdrop, I came here and I thought; ‘wow, what the hell have I done?’
“But I loved the sport too much to let that turn me off.”
Prior to Flinders Peak, the club was based south east of Geelong at Moolap, a venue junior vice president Richard Haugh describes as a ‘pretty rustic set up’ and a major detachment from its roots at Kardinia Park.
“It makes a huge difference, and we’re closer to the street now as well, so cars driving by can actually see what’s going on,” says Preston after training at the new facility in Corio.
“Even for sponsorship it made it hard, because they would ask; ‘well, where am I going to be seen?’
“Now we’re a little bit closer to the Highway and people know where we are.”
Koyama and Richard Haugh’s son Brodie are part of a trio in the under 16s which are the first to come all the way through the club’s junior program and the team also includes kids from Ballarat, Melbourne’s south-west suburbs and the rapidly growing areas to the west and north of Geelong.
The cultural make-up of the squad is also diverse with players of Tongan, Kiwi, Japanese, Zimbabwean and Samoan descent, along with a few blonde-haired Aussies, and turning such a motley crew into a cohesive unit has been a challenge for Preston and his former Rams teammate Craig Cowley.
“We’ve got to make it interesting, but sometimes I think people don’t respect that these kids are smarter than we give them credit for,” says the 34-year-old.
“I’ve had conversations with people who are saying; ‘oh no, I think that’s too advanced for them’, but I watch them running around out there and they’re grasping it really fast.
“A lot of them haven’t had the time to get bad habits, so if when they come down they’re always learning, I’ve found that’s what they get really excited about.”
After a knee injury forced him into retirement from playing in 2016, Preston coached the senior Rams, and spent much of the 2019 pre season shadowing Melbourne Rebels head coach David Wessels at AAMI Park.
“I got to see Dave Wessels and how he runs his training sessions, observing how structured it is, and how they go from one drill to the next, to the next, and it’s about getting that muscle memory, but under fatigue,” says Preston.
“I really wanted to transfer that over to these guys and not show them what rugby’s like around the outskirts of Australia, I want to show them what’s happening at the absolute top of our sport.”
But such ambitious goals are far detached from the concerns of the average Geelong parent, who generally have a limited understanding of rugby, and often perceive it as a sport in which their child is more likely to suffer a serious injury.
“In the off season I did a lot of calling parents, letting them know who I was and what my plan was,” says Preston.
“We also held a pre-season launch with a PowerPoint presentation, which was quite professional, and that was about outlaying the fact that we understand the sport as coaches really well, so we would never put anyone in a position we didn’t feel they were ready for.
“Some of these kids have been put in positions they’ve never tried before but, because of their attributes, it really suited them and they’ve taken to it like a duck to water.
“But that purely came down to the parents giving us the trust to see that in them.”
A first-time junior coach, allaying the fears of parents was one of Preston’s initial challenges, but he then had to foster a supportive and positive culture among a group of rough-and-tumble boys in their mid teens.
Lock Tarkyn Cameron makes the two-hour round trip from Ballarat when he’s not working nights at McDonald’s, and the representative basketballer says the atmosphere is a big reason why.
“I come down here, and you’re treated as family, everyone speaks to you whether you know them, or not,” says the 15-year-old.
“I watched a couple of Geelong (under 14) games last year and the atmosphere was amazing.”
Mum Cindy Cameron drives Tarkyn to training and is also starting to appreciate the rugby difference.
“Tarkyn’s a huge 15-year-old boy, and the basketball environment can be very competitive, but I haven’t had any problems with rugby,” she says.
“Sometimes when he walks off the court in basketball he can feel it’s his fault they didn’t win, even though there’s meant to be no I in team, but he’s always loved rugby and is just happier here.”
Zimbabwean Leona Banda is another rugby mum who needed some convincing, but the influence of living in New Zealand for more than a decade before moving to Geelong meant son Munashe eventually won the battle to play.
“Munashe has always played soccer, he’s always wanted to play rugby too because his older brother (Brandon) plays in New Zealand (for the Waikato Chiefs development squad), but I was trying to stop both of them from playing because it’s so rough,” she says.
“I just don’t understand the game, but once he (Brandon) got to 16, I started trying to understand the reason why he wanted to play.
“Both the boys just love the contact and, in the end, I just had to support my son and he enjoys the environment.”
Richard Haugh, who has been everything from a player, senior coach to president in his 18 years at the Rams, cites the fact three of his junior coaches aren’t at the club because of their own children as another positive.
“It’s the old chestnut, isn’t it, getting involved because your kids are playing but these guys aren’t dads, they just want to be here to coach, and we’ve never had that before,” he says.
“Shaun and Craig are ex seniors who have both played at a very good level and what they’re doing with these boys is unreal.
“What we’re trying to do in the under 14s and 16s is make it fun, but also teach them new skills that they haven’t had.
“They want to be here because they’re learning, but also enjoying it.
“But Shaun is also learning to understand the players as much as they’re learning to understand him, because it’s the first time he’s coached juniors.”
Both Haugh and Preston credit last year’s under 14 coach Craig Monument with giving many the current under 16s a great skills base, but there are also players in the group who are completely new to rugby.
“You’re only as fast as your slowest person, so the whole time we’ve tried to reiterate the fact that, we are putting a lot of structure into them, but rather than just running around and following the ball wherever it goes, giving them roles where they can concentrate on their own position and their own role,” says Preston.
“When they first heard the word ‘structure’, they were like; ‘oh my God, structure, we’ve never done that before’, then they started realising they’re actually saving energy because they’re not chasing the ball everywhere, they’ve just got to be ready for when the ball comes back – be ready for that play.
“We’re trying to up their rugby IQ more than anything, I guess.”
Late last month Geelong hosted one of Rugby Victoria’s ‘round zero’ dispensation days, where juniors are judged by officials as to whether they can play up or down an age group, and the under 16s Rams had some tough hit outs against strong Melbourne clubs Brimbank and Wyndham.
On Saturday Geelong host Box Hill in its first competition game, which should be a much closer match up, and a fixture which has been given the prominence of a curtain raiser to the senior team’s clash with Brimbank.
Preston’s squad reflects the ethnically diverse community it represents, a city that’s still finding its way as it emerges from a long era as the state’s hub for manufacturing and heavy industry.
But as companies like Ford and Alcoa move out, hundreds of young families are moving in. With the housing boom on the Surf Coast and improved accessibility to Melbourne, greater Geelong’s population is pushing up towards 250,000.
The city centre has been revitalised with new eateries and bars, artists take advantage of a cheap rent initiative to fill empty shopfronts with their wares, and wandering down Pakington Street in Geelong West these days feels more like inner-city Melbourne than regional Victoria.
With their future secure in Corio, the opportunity is there for the Rams to consolidate and expand their mob, but one parent who will definitely be at Hendy Street Reserve on Saturday is Gaiji Koyama’s father Seiya.
“Shaun has a big passion for this club, and I think he will be good for our boys,” says Seiya, a Japanese rugby tragic who works in agribusiness and has watched most of Preston’s training sessions.
“This is not a rugby state or city, and Shaun could be coaching in Melbourne or somewhere else, but his dream is to see these boys play senior level in Geelong.
“I want my son to be a humble man, and I think the culture of rugby and this team is suited to that.”
