New Zealand is a Rugby-mad culture, where Rugby is in your face 24/7 " through your family, through the media, and through the education system, where Rugby is encouraged from the first day you walk through the school gates. For most New Zealanders, Rugby is a way of life, whether you like it or not. If you&rsquore a diehard Rugby player, by your last year of high school your aim is to make the School 1st XV. That can be how you measure whether you succeeded or failed at school.

Playing for one of the top 1st XV Schools in your provincial region gives you the opportunity to play at against other top 1st XV teams from around the country. You might get spotted by a talent scout, which would be the next step toward getting selected for your Provincial Rugby Academy, one of the age-group provincial representative teams, or the National age-group sides.

If you grow up in North America, you have a wide selection of sports you can take up, such as ice hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball, or football. Each has a large following throughout the country, through media coverage, community support, and well-run structures and systems that get young athletes playing their sport of choice.

Rugby in North America, however, has only a small presence in the school system. Young athletes take up Rugby only when they reach their last years at high school. American school sides that I have watched and coached have at most two teams throughout the school. In New Zealand, a school with around 1,500 students would field anywhere from 12 to 20 Rugby teams. Each of these teams would play in a Provincial Secondary School competition every Saturday morning during the winter months.

A number of current club Rugby players in North America, and even players on the national teams, didn&rsquot take up Rugby until they left high school or even until they were in their early 20s. This usually means that player&rsquos core skills and basic knowledge of the fundamentals of Rugby are lacking.

In New Zealand, the NZRFU has been pushing coaches to teach core skills, rather than winning rugby philosophies, to the junior players (ages 5 -13). At that age, there is no point in practicing team runs and back plays if the players can&rsquot catch and pass effectively off both sides. The long-term athlete-development model holds that athletes best improve motor skills and acquire new skills when they are between 10 and 14 years old. If athletes are learning new skills in their early 20s, it will take a longer time for them to master the skills.

Look at a player like Ma&rsquoa Nonu, currently the world&rsquos best line breaker. He is more dangerous than any other Rugby player in the world at the moment. I would imagine that, when he was growing up, his coaches didn&rsquot worry if he could pass off both hands to a supporting player. I imagine that they didn&rsquot even coach him on the skill of passing, because every time he touched the ball in would run over or around his opposite players and the coach would be happy. Ma&rsquoa first made the All Blacks in 2003, and he still struggles to hold down a regular test spot �" because of his lack of ball skills. Ma&rsquoa has been working on this aspect of his game, but it has taken a long time for him to improve enough to play test rugby for the All Blacks in the midfield. If his coaches in his early years of playing Rugby had worked on his core skills, what kind of a player would he be now?

So this is an area in which New Zealand kids have a huge advantage over most players from other countries, as they have played organized Rugby for their local club from the time they were 5 years old and Rugby is offered in all most every primary school in New Zealand.

There is a downside, however, to specializing too early. At North Harbour Rugby Union, in New Zealand, where I worked as a coach-development manager before I came to America, we actively encourage our young potential rugby players to play other sports before their high-school years because we believe it does a player a lot of good to learn the skills, tactics, and values of other sports. There is a large crossover of skills from sport to sport. John Gallagher, the 1987 All Blacks World Cup-winning fullback, didn&rsquot take up Rugby until he was 20. Before that, he&rsquod played soccer for most of his life in England. Current All Blacks Lock Alli Williams played Aussie Rules, soccer, and basketball before finally taking up Rugby in his last year of high school.