Joe Harrison photographs an extraordinary league team.
It’s a chilly night in Sydenham. The commuters of Ōtautahi/Christchurch clog the southern reaches of Colombo Street, grimly focused on getting through the traffic lights.
But at Bradford Park, just a footy field or two away, the ambience is very different. Here, floodlights shine on grass. Young men laugh, chuck a ball and crack each other up.
This is the home patch of rugby league club the Sydenham Swans, and Natu Togiaso and his team of under-16s are setting up. They lace up boots, bring out tackle bags, start running drills. Many of these teens have been playing together, coached by Togiaso, since the under-sevens—he hadn’t coached before, but his own boy was playing, and the kids needed someone to teach them how to tackle.
As the session continues, it gains a serious edge. These players are good—they won the under-15s grand final in Christchurch last year—and for many, a professional future is in their sights.
Four already train in the Warriors Academy development system, while two more represent the Warriors in the Harold Matthews Cup, an age-grade league in Australasia’s NRL competition. Another couple are in the development squads of Sydney clubs the Roosters and the Bulldogs, and three others have been snapped up by talent scouts. Others play basketball, tennis, and rugby union at high levels.
But all are tied to a promise. “If they ever make the NRL,” says Togiaso, “I just want them to shout me KFC, and I’ll try my best to make it to their NRL debut game.”
Enjoying this time together, and their sport, has always been the priority. Off-field, the team go paintballing, go-karting, have barbecues.
The team’s core have stayed together for a decade, even switching clubs as Togiaso and his fellow coaches sought better support, finding it at Sydenham and its focus on “family first, then league”. The boys come from all over the city, and some even turn up to trainings from Ashburton, an hour’s drive to the south.
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Lincoln Siataga-Nelson-Albrett, 15, is one of the team’s many high achievers—he’s represented Canterbury in rugby league and this year he’s made the trials to do the same in rugby union—but the “everlasting friendships” he’s gained from his Sydenham team are what he values most.
When Siataga-Nelson-Albrett was 11, he lost his father suddenly. Teammates visited him at home and helped his family through the funeral and the aftermath. “The boys really uplifted me, all the coaching staff…
I have a lot of thanks for them,” he says. “Especially Natu… He rushed straight over, took us away from the situation, and sort of, like, hugged us and told us it was going to be all good.”
It was September 2020; the boys were already coping with COVID disruptions. The lockdowns dragged. Siataga-Nelson-Albrett laughs about the first day back at training. “We were all unfit, eh? There was a whole bunch of heavy breathing.” It was good to see the boys again, he says.
Playing together for so long has built their confidence and led to other achievements, Togiaso’s noticed. So has their rule of “positive competition, no put-downs”. Sometimes it’s a quiet shift: Siataga-Nelson-Albrett says he’s become “more comfortable talking to people that wouldn’t really understand me or get me, and [I’m] able to talk about stuff like my dad”. Sometimes it’s more obvious; Togiaso has watched proudly as the boys thrived in the arts and leadership roles.
“We’ve got dudes involved in theatre, musicals, choirs,” he says. “And there’s no, ‘Oh nah, you’re a pussy because you’re in the choir.’ It’s like, ‘You get your arse up there—you sing!’ Anything that their teammates do, they just gee them up, a hundred per cent.”
It all flows, Togiaso says, from the principle that “we play for each other. You play for your teammate, your brother next to you.”
Most of the team are Pasifika and Māori; Togiaso is Samoan.
The tight links between the young men and their coach are what caught the eye of photographer Joe Harrison when he saw the team training just over his own back fence.
“Because I’ve got a son, I’m interested in the journey into manhood,” he says, “and the role that sport plays in that journey, and the good things that come with it.”
Not much of a league fan himself, Harrison had to learn to shoot live sport with a long lens, often at night. But his real focus was on more documentary-style studies at close range, shot with a wide-angle lens.
Once the boys were accustomed to Harrison and his camera, he gained access to the team’s changing rooms and their downtime. He photographed players as they hugged and wrote messages of faith and family—Mum; Aiga—on their wristbands. Harrison also caught the moment when players were assigned their jerseys for the season, and the seriousness with which they took this responsibility.
The plan for Togiaso and the team is to stay together until they reach the premier grade, hopefully in a few years’ time, becoming Sydenham’s first premier men’s team since 2017. At that stage, he’ll hand the team on to another coach, considering his job done.
Togiaso has built an impressive coaching reputation, but he doesn’t want the focus to be on that—he points to his fellow coaches and club parents, and insists that his own achievements are nothing compared with those of his players. He loves seeing them grow, being part of their story.
“These kids have come a long way, man, and now they’re finally being rewarded.”
