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Paremoremo Raiders - prisoners run the line
STEVE KILGALLON
Last updated 05:00 14/07/2013
Grahame Cox/Fairfax NZ
HOME GAME: Paremoremo Raiders have to cope with losing players who are released but attract prisoners to the team with the lure of the player-of-the-day prize – a $10 phonecard.
The far corner of the field borders a pasture where cows graze quietly. There's a nursery behind one deadball line, mature trees clustered by the other. It could be one of the more scenic sports grounds in the country, if not for the 3-metre razor wire behind both touchlines.
A visit to the home ground of the Paremoremo Raiders rugby league club requires photo ID, punctuality (you must arrive at least 30 minutes before kickoff, or they won't let you in) and a slow drive past the high-security block of Auckland Prison.
A fixture against the Raiders is a unique experience in New Zealand sport - they are the last remaining team of serving prison inmates permitted to play in competition against regular citizens.
They were originally called the Glenfield Barracudas and they began some time in 1998 or 1999; nobody at the Auckland Rugby League can quite remember their genesis. But it was in 2000 that the Raiders first reached the premier-two grand final at Carlaw Park, were allowed to play a game off the prison grounds, and were most definitely noticed.
Sel Pearson, chairman of the league then, remembers it vividly. "Talkback went absolutely berserk," says Pearson. "The personal attacks on me were absolutely disgraceful, but that's what talkback thrived on . . . oh, it was poisonous."
Pearson said the tide turned when someone from Corrections rang up to say the league players had abnormally low reoffending rates. He laughs. "The phone lines were jammed until then, but it all went quiet, so I rung up and said ‘look on the bright side, they only want one away game and they say they'll never bother us again'."
Pare were lucky. The last prison league team, the Ngawha Saints, had a brief and unhappy existence in the Northland competition in 1998; attacked by National MP John Carter as making life easy for prisoners, one club refused to play them, Corrections wouldn't let them out for the finals and they were thrown out after a year.
Pare, meanwhile, have quietly got on with life, playing first as an adjunct to the Glenfield, then Northcote, and now Hibiscus Coast clubs.
The Department of Corrections confirms that, while sport is valued for "forging bonds in the community and helping improve prisoners' attitudes and behaviours", Pare is its only inmates' sporting team. Canterbury University criminologist Greg Newbold says they are the last remnant of a once-extensive prison sporting network. He remembers captaining the football team at Hautu prison in Waikato in the 1970s, and the debating team - coached by former deputy prime minister Don McKinnon - at Paremoremo. But these teams withered in the early 1990s thanks to overcrowding, gang problems, and diversion of budgets from programmes into extra security.
It's probably because of their remarkable discipline that Pare survived. "They've never had a send-off, I can't recall any judicial issues or any complaints about them," says Auckland Rugby League boss Pat Carthy. Referees who regularly whistle Pare games all agree. "I found the discipline of teams playing against them much worse - they bait them," says one.
The refs have an informal agreement that they will do their best to avoid dismissing any Pare players, as the sent-off player wouldn't be able to attend the judiciary hearing and so the team might fold. In return, the prisoners are under strict instructions from the staff to never retaliate.
Most teams don't mind two trips a season through the prison gates (there's no traditional home-and-away for Pare, of course). The coach of today's visitors confides: "My boy was shitting it about coming here last season; this year, he wasn't worried at all, he said how good these guys were."
On a chilly Sunday afternoon, fewer than 20 spectators stand behind a simple taped barrier, so it's a game played mainly in good-humoured silence. A handful of grey tracksuited prisoners are visible behind the wire some 40 metres distant. Security is subtle but continuous. Pare's coaching team, staff members Tom Meyer and Perry Bray, are in their off-duty civvies.
Some of the prisoners have a fairly basic grasp of the rules, but their discipline is indeed almost impeccable. The away fullback is tiny, but instead of belting him, the prisoners gently fold him to the ground. One player makes an unwise comment to the referee, then offers a formal apology.
"Some guys have done drugs every day of their life," says Vince* thoughtfully, tilting back in his chair inside Pare's lowest-security unit. "They haven't thought about anything else. They've been in violence, gangs, their whole life. When they come in here, they realise there is another life, they can change."
Vince is the Raiders captain. A burly prop reaching the end of a lengthy sentence, he had never played rugby league on the outside. "Outside, they wouldn't think league is fun," he continues. "They would only think of drugs, violence, gangs as fun. Outside, they never listen to anyone but themselves and, if anything bad happens, they give them a hiding. Here, they have to commit, to listen to the captain, the coach, and control ourselves. They don't see it, but the league does that."
Vince says one former teammate is now playing club football and "never back to his old life". He has the same plans.
Newbold says the league team may not have a statistically significant impact on reoffending rates, but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile: such activity saves money for Corrections because it ends up with physically and mentally healthier inmates, with much higher morale, reducing the risk of riots.
Meyer has no doubts about the team's redemptive qualities. That's why, for the past seven years, the head of the prison groundstaff has gone into Paremoremo on his day off to act as manager, secretary, waterboy and mentor to the Raiders. "I am a great believer," says Meyer, "that you can't turn back the pages, but you can always go forward. What they have done is done." It's why Bray, the "driven, passionate" manager of the low-security unit from which players are selected, also volunteers to act as touch judge.
"We're lucky," says Vince. "I am not trying to build him [Meyer] up, but these people sacrifice their time for us. We're not like clubs outside who have money for coaches and managers. Plus we are criminals, we are banned from the community, yet these people have the heart to help us."
The prisoners play in the relatively social premier two competition, but prepare meticulously. The week starts with a team meeting on Mondays, where everyone has to speak up about their performance the day before - which, says Meyer, teaches team-work and communications, skills they never had outside. They train on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and informally throw a ball around in the exercise yard in between. Many spend time on the grounds crew with Meyer, cleaning the away dressing room, marking and rolling the field.
On Saturdays, they gather to watch televised club games on Maori TV, where the veterans help the novices study running lines and positions. They are, says Vince, by forced circumstance, like a family. "Outside," he explains, "you can go find another team. In here, you can't run away, you are going to see them every day, every hour, every minute."
Meyer and Bray keep an eye out for likely recruits who possess the necessary minimum-security classification, and are not averse to asking for transfers from other prisons. So they knew about Sam* for a long time before he arrived in the unit; he was a highly rated junior prospect before his life went awry. And Sam knew about them, and knew he had to behave himself before he had any chance of joining the team.
"I had come to a stage where I had to cut the bullshit and start focusing on what I really needed to be doing," says Sam, now the team's halfback and playmaker. "So I snapped out of the negative stuff and began to look forward to getting out . . . I knew for a fact I would be getting back into league, so I needed this unit." But recruitment can still be hard. "You work with what you've got," says Bray of his team, "and do the best with it, and we've done that." The unit hosts 60 inmates, all minimum-security prisoners being prepared for release, who go on home leave and work-release programmes, but many of them are much older prisoners.
Turnover is also high. "This is the last unit before you get out, the goal of this unit is to get the boys ready to get out . . . so we have to deal with whatever we have got," says Vince. "One week we had four players get out, and 45- and 50-year-olds playing. This is the struggle we have." Veterans such as Vince and Sam school the new recruits, talk older guys into filling in, and ensure the player of the day prize - a $10 phonecard - goes to the novices. "We come in here afterwards, and they are straight on the phone to their family," says Vince, smiling.
So some years, Pare are quite good. This year has been a struggle for numbers. They won just three regular season games in section one of the premier-two competition; ironically, the league leaders was a church-based team, the Bay Roskill God Squad.
Despite poor form, the Raiders still retain a good chance of reaching finals day in the second-tier Pennant. Will they do it? "We've got to stay focused, positive," says Meyer. "My sayings here are ‘never give up' and ‘steady pace wins the race'."
Finals means a rare trip outside. Last year, the Raiders reached the bowl final against the Kaipara Lancers, and a squad of armed guards flanked the touchlines of Mt Smart's No 2 arena. Ian Collis managed the Kaipara team that day. "They'd be the cleanest team we played with, because when you play them it's their luxury," he says. "They can't afford to be ill-disciplined or they don't play next week. Our boys knew if they played them it would be a good, hard game of footy. When they came off they would be sore." It was, says Vince fondly, an amazing opportunity. He doesn't mention the game itself; instead he talks about the stadium, the fans, the bus ride into the city which made him feel like an All Black travelling to a test match. "They get shocked," explains Tom.
"They can't cope with it, the big crowd, the outdoors, all the people."
Rather unusually, at the end of the game, the two teams link arms, and huddle sociably for a long moment. The idea, explains Sam later, is to thank the visitors for giving up their time to come and give them a game. Then the Paremoremo team, almost as one, trot to the gates in the far corner. Except for one player, a quite high-profile prisoner, who approaches the sideline. A guard calls out a warning, but he has gone only to embrace his grandfather, who has been watching quietly. Then the heavens suddenly open. As heavy rain falls, he jogs after his team-mates. He's the last through the gate as it closes, and within seconds, the field is deserted.
* Names have been changed
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/league/8915724/Paremoremo-Raiders-prisoners-run-the-line
