Schoolboys Cup: NRL expands Peter Mulholland Cup with Victorian schools playing for Storm Cup

The explosion of rugby league among Victoria’s junior ranks has encouraged the NRL to be bold with taking the game to the next level. Find out what it means for schoolboys league in the state.

The NRL’s premier schoolboys league competition will, for the first time this year, have a Victorian pool.

Encouraged by the incredible recent growth of the junior ranks in the state, the NRL have moved to introduce a four-school pool for the Peter Mulholland Cup. Games start on Tuesday at the Seabrook Reserve in Broadmeadows.

Students from The Grange, Mt Ridley, Victoria Uni Secondary College and Hallam Senior College will play off in a group for the Storm Cup.

The Peter Mulholland Cup, which feeds directly into the NRL National Schoolboys Cup along with the elite schools programs in Queensland, has grown into a five-pool format this year, with NSW schools Matraville Sports High and Central Coast Sports High also joining.

Hallam and The Grange have struck up quite a rivalry.

NRL community development official Jono Dallas said the new pool was the next evolution of rugby league in Victoria.

Victoria had previously just entered two sides in the tournament. Last year it was The Grange and Hallam Senior College.

“We’re really trying to invest time and grow rugby league in Victoria, and not just by putting time in a couple of different schools,” he said.

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“It’s only got to this stage because we’ve done so much work with the introductory schools, who are slowly getting better over the last few years. They are more invested, which is really exciting.”

The success of the Melbourne Storm has inspired a generation of rugby league juniors across the state, but Dallas said it was the work of volunteers and officials at the lower level that had paved the way.

“It’s been a gradual growth, the representative pathways through the Storm helps, they’re working really hard to grow their elite pathways,” he said.

“Actually it’s what comes underneath the elite pathways that is so important, community rugby league and school rugby league is where the growth is. Going back a few years, we didn’t have many schools playing true forms of the game.

Manly’s Kelma Tuilagi was a huge Victorian rugby league success story.

“Five or six years ago, there were two schools at that level and no one could play them because it wasn’t really safe. To have seven schools fighting it out for four spots in the pool is really great.”

The top two Victorian schools will playoff for the Storm Cup final later this year, with the winner guaranteed a spot in the Peter Mulholland Cup quarter-finals against one of the competitions heavyweights from the top pool.

Dallas said it would be a historic first for the competition.

“They’re probably not at that level of the NSW schools right now, but the scorelines are much closer than what they’ve been in previous seasons,” he said.

“Having the Storm Cup as a stand-alone Victorian competition now guarantees a Victorian school is going to be represented on quarterfinals day, which has never happened.

“The idea is trying to give these schools the opportunity to play against these big schools in Sydney and across NSW. They’ll start to get exposed to the top-level schools in the country, so they can start pushing themselves to the next level.”