Peter Skelt: 30-plus years of motivation
It’s hard to think of many other people who would enter the same conversation in terms of a similar influence on player development in Southland rugby.
OPINION: As MC Nick Jeffrey rolled into a citation at the Ascot Park Hotel on Friday night it dawned on Peter Skelt.
Skelt dropped his head a touch and muttered an expletive under his breath as he realised the person Jeffrey was talking about was Skelt himself.
Skelt was one of two BDO Services to Sport recipients at the ILT Southland Sports Awards.
The honour had caught Skelt by surprise. Although probably the main surprise for many was that Skelt hadn’t already picked up the award previously.
Skelt represented New Zealand in badminton in his youth. He also played for and coached Southland’s topflight cricket team.
But it is in the sport of rugby where he has had the largest impact.
So much so that it’s hard to think of many other people who would enter the same conversation in terms of a similar influence on player development in Southland rugby.
Bear with me for a bit as I roll out some names to put it in perspective.
Jason Rutledge, Mils Muilaina, Clarke Dermody, Corey Flynn, David Hall, James Wilson, Josh Bekhuis, Jamie Mackintosh, John Hardie, Robbie Robinson, Ethan de Groot, Sean Withy, Jack Taylor.
They have all passed through Peter Skelt’s school of rugby before becoming professional rugby players. And we only just scratched the surface with those names.
Ask any of them and they will have a story as to how Skelt shaped their careers.
Some are easier to explain than others.
Take Corey Flynn for example. He was a looseforward until Skelt had a light bulb moment one day while coaching Flynn in the Southland Boys’ High School first XV.
Skelt thought Flynn would make a good hooker in the frontrow. Flynn himself wasn’t all that thrilled about Skelt’s idea.
At the time Flynn was a rower at a national level and in his own words was lean and had a gangly neck which didn't resemble the look of a traditional frontrower.
Playing hooker seemed an odd idea.
But the reality is it was a life-changing moment. Flynn went on to carve out a 17-year professional rugby career playing hooker which included 15 appearances for the All Blacks and a 150 Super Rugby caps with the Crusaders.
Skelt started helping coach the Southland Boys’ High School first XV in 1989 and he remains involved today.
He had big boots to fill when he replaced an institution of Southland Boys' rugby in terms of Clive Williams.
Williams’ coaching tenure with the Southland Boys’ first XV had stretched 20-plus years, from the late 1960s to 1990.
Williams helped produce numerous national age-group representatives and played the lead role in helping the Invercargill school become a regular national Top 4 team.
But Skelt more than filled that void.
By 2016 he was named a life member of the Southland Boys’ High School Rugby Club for his tireless work.
That honour prompted some insight from others as to just what made Skelt such a successful coach and mentor.
Jamie Mackintosh was one of those to share his thoughts at that time.
“His ability for talent identification and also to create a good environment, I don't know if there is anyone better and I've been coached by some good coaches, right from the All Blacks to Super Rugby to right throughout the world.”
“He would push guys, but I don't think there would be many people who have been coached by Skelty who don't respect him, and that is his amazing ability.
“He just had this aura about him where you just knew what was expected from him. It was tough, it was hard, and it was ruthless, but we also had a lot of fun doing it.”
“We would spend a lot of time sitting around the scrum machine talking. We would be leaning on the scrum machine and there would be a plane fly over and he would yell 'Anzac' and we would all dive to the ground like we were in a war.
“He reckoned the Otago Boys' boys were spying on us,” Mackintosh recalled at the time with a touch of laughter mixed in.
“We would train for three hours at a time, and we would train in the dark. The only place we could do lineouts was over by the library because there was a little bit of light shining down.
"He would say, 'no-one works harder than we do; we train in the dark. Let's do another 50 lineouts’.”
Skelt himself has conceded his coaching methods have probably softened a little over time. But the results have largely remained the same.
It was all rewarded last year when he was part of the Southland Boys’ High School coaching group that lead SBHS to its first national Top 4 schools title.
During the first half of Skelt’s time coaching the SBHS first XV there was a feeling amongst many in the Southland rugby community that his coaching style would never transfer into coaching adults.
The thought was that men in their 20s and 30s - with a few years of experience under their belts - wouldn't lap up the stern words or mind games that teenage lads do.
But it was a thought that was proved wrong in 2005.
Skelt teamed up with Daryl Thompson to coach the Southland men’s development team; effectively the province's second team behind the Stags.
The development team played in a national B competition, which at that time followed the national provincial championship competition.
It was a no-frills sort of team. Once the Stags were picked, there wasn't a lot of representative-type players left-over in the province.
In 2004, the Southland development team battled towards the bottom end of the competition but, by the end of 2005, they won the national B competition.
Skelt could in fact coach adults, and coach them well.
The fact Skelt never got the chance as the head coach of the Southland Stags will forever go down as one of Southland rugby’s more puzzling and disappointing situations.
In fact, it is actually a travesty if we are going to be truly blunt about it.
Skelt had helped David Henderson and Simon Culhane in an assistant capacity with the Stags and in 2018 decided he would apply for the Stags’ head coaching job.
The applications were eventually narrowed down to a short-list of two. Skelt and former All Black prop Dave Hewett.
The word at that time was Skelt had interviewed well, and it seemed inevitable it was Skelt’s time.
If anyone had ever earned the right to coach the Stags it was Skelt.
But those calling the shots at Rugby Southland at the time thought otherwise. They potentially were blinded by the line in Hewett’s CV which read former All Black.
Whatever the reasoning, it left us with one of the great ‘what if'?’ stories attached to Southland sport.
Southland went to win one game from 20 outings under Hewett’s stewardship and to this day many wonder what Skelt could have done if the proud Southlander was at least given a chance.
Rugby Southland later approached Skelt about taking on the director of rugby role which he declined.
But he did get involved in helping with the appointment process for that job with Matt Saunders eventually landing the role at the start of last year.
While it was a surprise that it took until Friday night for Skelt to pick up the Services to Sport honour at the Southland Sports Awards, it actually was the perfect night for it to happen.
It was a night when the 2023 Southland Boys’ High School first XV claimed a host of awards following its national title last year.
Included amongst those award winners was coach Jason Dermody who Skelt once coached in the first in the 90s and has in recent years helped shape as a rugby coach on the rise.
Congratulations Skelty.