10/06/2026
Reflections from Riki Tahere, Head Coach
A few weeks ago, at the Matches Festival here in Canterbury, something happened that peaked my interest.
Alongside the rugby results, the Te Waka Humarie Award was presented — a fair play recognition given to the team that best demonstrates character and values during competition. Not skill. Not scorelines. Just how a team carries itself: how they treat opponents, how they respond to bad calls, how they behave when no one is watching.
See Image below:
Look at those numbers for a moment. The winning girls’ team Selwyn Combined Girls scored 55 out of 60. The top boys’ team scored 47. The gap between the top boys’ result and the top girls’ result is eight points. In a 60-point values assessment, that is not a rounding error. That is a signal.
Why might this gap exist? I’ve thought about this a lot and I don’t think the answer is flattering to those of us who coach boys.
Adam Grant, the organisational psychologist, writes a lot about the difference between cultures that reward performance and cultures that reward values. His research suggests that when winning becomes the dominant signal of worth, other behaviours respect, generosity, accountability and quietly atrophy. They don’t disappear. They just stop getting coached.
In boys’ sport, we talk endlessly about physicality, competitiveness, resilience under pressure. These are real and important qualities. But the Te Waka Humarie results suggest we may be under-investing in something equally important: how our players treat people. Opponents. Referees. Each other. Girls on and off the field.
The girls’ scores suggest those values are not automatic. They are taught. They are modelled. They are reinforced, deliberately, by coaches who have decided they matter.
Character is not what emerges when everything goes right. It is what you find out about a team when the game is close, the referee makes a mistake, and no one is handing out awards.
