St Peter’s learned how to take on the big boys

Brendan Gallagher continues his series looking at rugby's great schools

NO sooner had I mentioned recently that Campion were the only state school thus far to win the national Daily Mail Cup than I was rightly pulled up by a number of readers who correctly pointed out that St Peter's RC School won the U18 title in 2006 when they defeated Durham in fine style at Twickenham.

St Peter's reached another final in 2009 and, for a decade or so, were permanent fixtures at the sharp end of both the U18 and U15 competitions. They spawned players of note such as Marcel Garvey, Adam Eustace, Ryan Lamb, Jack Adams, Charlie Sharples and Shaun Knight with Gloucester, just down the road, inevitably the main beneficiary.

Back in their glory years St Peter's were a Roman Catholic comprehensive – they are now an academy – and their achievement has many parallels with Campion. When Gloucester flyhalf and PE graduate Dave Pointon joined the staff in the mid 70s they were still a football school despite being situated in the middle of a rugby mad city and although the switch was soon made progress was slow.

For a number of years they could only get fixtures against school second XVs but gradually they improved and became a force locally before taking on the rest of the country.

“We had a fantastic headmaster, the late Lawrence Montague who alas died young with cancer,” recalls Pointon who became the focal figure for St Peter's Rugby. “He backed his staff 100 per cent in everything we did whether it be academically or the arts or sport. He became a rugby fanatic and he wanted us to excel, not just compete, despite the disadvantages we operated under.

“I distinctly remember an inquest one Monday morning after a defeat against QEGS Wakefield in a big Cup match. He was a driving force but I loved that competitive spirit. If everybody is making such a huge effort why not get it right and win!

“Our PE staff grew from four to ten and I had an incredible team of coaches with the likes of Giles Potter, Daffyd Richards and big Stuart Crabb who took our forwards and is the man in charge now.

“The kick-start was a run of outstanding Year Seven intakes who were unbeaten for eight seasons, we coached them all the way through the school and the initial carrot was always an appearance in the local Midland Bank U14 finals at Kingsholm. We won that a few times and the next stop was the Frist XV and various Daily Mail campaigns.

“I was also involved with Gloucester at the time and learning a lot off cutting edge rugby coaches like Nigel Melville, Dean Ryan and Phillipe Saint-Andre and took as much of that knowledge as I could back to the school.

“The momentum built and suddenly rugby was a ‘thing' at the school but it was still built on hard work. Lunch time and evening training sessions and at one stage the lads built the First XV pitch in a field the school had acquired. We prepared the ground, did the railings and duckboards and I got a whole load of old advertising hoardings from Kingsholm to add to the ambience and give shape to the ‘arena'. One parent who worked at an RAF airfield came up with a coning tower which we used to video our matches and training for analysis “We were quite adventurous in our game plan. Even 20 years ago, before it took off in senior rugby, the kick pass was a big part of our armoury. We always had some nice footballers at ten and some serious gas on the wing like Marcel Garvey and Charlie Sharples.”

St Peter's first schools' international was flanker Thomas Miklausic who went on to to make one first team appearance for Gloucester and represent Croatia before he retired to set up a ski-holiday and personal fitness empire.

Another outstanding performer from that early era was fly-half Joe Goatley, the star member of a big rugby playing family, of whom big things were predicted. He was another who made one appearance for Gloucester before doing great things with Cinderford.

Fly-halves are something of a speciality at St Peter's with brothers Brad and Mark Davies also star products along with Lamb, although Lamb played mainly at scrum-half at school.

St Peter's season of all seasons came in 2006 and was the culmination of some very strong seasons throughout the early noughties. In 2002 they lost only 23-22 to an outstanding Campion side in the quarter-finals and the following year there was a semifinal defeat against Barnard Castle School which came off the back of an outstanding quarter-final win over Whitgift.

The following year St Peter's had the misfortune to meet Colston's in round six and the next season encountered a very mature Exeter College team in round five and lost 15-10. They resolved that 2005-6 would be a different story. And it was.

Their trump card that year was the extreme gas of Sharples who scored a hat trick in their 27-9 semi-final win over John Cleveland Hinckley and then claimed another in a 26-17 win over Durham in the final.

Four St Peter's pupils repre-sented England Schools that season: Mark Davies, Joe Williams, Ryan Burford and Danny Pointon who captained his country. Danny was coach Dave's youngest son. Elder brother Joe appeared in the semi against Barnard Castle.

In 2009 St Peter's reached another final after a classic semifinal against another St Peter's – this time from York – which they won 27-25. At Twickenham, however, they could not combat a massive Truro College pack and the power of American centre Hanno Dirksen who was already playing for the Eagles as a schoolboy. Even in a 39-18 defeat St Peter's produced some trademark passages of exciting attacking rugby.

“Looking back there were challenges that perhaps you wouldn't think of,” reflects Pointon. “As our fixture list improved we had to find the money for the coach hire for all those trips and when big independent schools came to us we needed to provide some proper hospitality. They were outside of our basic budget but a couple of sponsors stepped in and parents were always very supportive.

“From very little we grew a rugby culture that so far has produced 20 England schoolboy internationals and one Welsh – Joe Skelton. We were never the biggest and sometimes struggled physically against some of the big Sixth Form College teams like Filton, Colston's, Exeter and Truro and had to box clever and use our skills to take them. What we really loved though were matches against old style schools like Whitgift, Wellington, Durham, Campion and others when we were much more equally matched.”

In recent years it's been much tougher going for St Peter's – it's impossible for state schools to match the big independent schools over a sustained period – and Hartpury College has emerged as the powerhouse rugby nursery in the area.

St Peter's passion for the game remains though. Current head of PE Stuart Crabb explains. “Our days of winning national trophies are possibly behind us but we take our rugby seriously and have much better facilities than 15 years ago with a 4G pitch and very good gym,” he said.

“We will never be able to offer ‘rugby scholarships'. What we do though is give all our lads – and now girls –a seven-year pathway to develop their rugby and if any show sufficient quality we have a good relationship with Gloucester.”