Montfort, ACS pair win NZ rugby-training stint
SINGAPORE — After two days of intensive training, two Singapore schoolboys have finally clinched their berths for a dream training stint with one of New Zealand’s top provincial rugby unions next June.
SINGAPORE — After two days of intensive training, two Singapore schoolboys have finally clinched their berths for a dream training stint with one of New Zealand’s top provincial rugby unions next June.
Montfort Secondary School’s Marcus Ng and Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) student Muhammad Nur Solihin Mansor were selected yesterday (Nov 30) for a two-week stint with the Wellington Rugby Union (WRU), home of Super Rugby side the Hurricanes, after impressing former New Zealand Sevens star Scott Waldrom, Singapore Rugby Union (SRU) technical director Inoki Afaeki and SRU general manager George Danapal at a training camp at St Andrew’s School last weekend.
The stint is part of the HSBC Singapore Rugby Sevens’ Heroes in the Making Programme, which aims to identify potential future national sevens players for Singapore. It will be fully paid for by the SRU, save for the boys’ personal expenses.
When in Wellington, Marcus and Solihin will get to work with various world-class coaches and train with the Wellington Lions youth squad. A graduate of the Lions youth squad is New Zealand All Blacks winger Julian Savea, who scored eight tries at the recent Rugby World Cup.
In all, 22 players from seven schools took part in the weekend training camp after putting in good displays at last month’s Singapore Schools Sevens and the Saints Sevens tournaments.
Marcus and Solihin were stunned when they received the good news by phone yesterday, Solihin perhaps more so than Marcus as he was initially tricked into believing that he had not made the cut.
Said the 16-year-old with a laugh: “I got a call this morning and was told I didn’t make it. I was then asked why I thought I didn’t make it before I was told at the end of the call that I was selected. I feel really blessed.”
Marcus said: “It is my dream to play for Singapore one day and I hope to gain as much experience as possible from the coaches in Wellington.
“I also want to thank my mother for this because she has been very supportive of me ever since I took up rugby in Secondary One. Even though I was pretty bad at it initially, she continued to encourage me.”
Waldrom, who works with the WRU, said he was impressed with what he saw at the weekend training camp.
“In terms of physique and ball-handling skills, the Singapore boys are not that different from our boys in New Zealand. One difference is perhaps the intensity,” he said. “The Singapore boys will certainly get a taste of that when they train in Wellington next year with boys of their age.”
Solihin said he learnt a lot from Waldrom during the camp. “Scott emphasised a lot on communication and I realised that is so vital in a sevens match,” he said.
“It was tough for all of us to talk to one another at first because we were all from different schools, but by the end of the camp, there was a lot of teamwork. Fitness training on the first day almost killed us.”