Let's give the others some credit too

It’s been a while since I’ve been here – it’s been a busy year and I was blessed to get my Saturday Star platform back, so I had a space to rant and rave in – to whatever audience is left, now that newspapers have seemingly become surplus to most peoples’ requirement.

But - sorry for those of you who were tricked into clicking on the link - I’m back, and for my two cents worth, I’ve got a thing or two I want to say to those who bleed blood in the colours of the schools they went to/work at/have their kids at, or combinations of those.

You have to stop taking praise for others as a criticism of yourself, and you have to start accepting that there are other schools around, that the kids there have talent too, that they have good coaches too; that they work as hard as you do and, yes, that sometimes they are better than you.

I’m of the Baby Boomer generation so this new media has been tough for me to master, and the one thing I still don’t have handle on is Twitter. I often forget that it’s really true that you won’t change anything by getting into arguments with faceless strangers who only have 140 characters to make their point. And the increase to 280 seems to have made it worse not better - though it’s too early to say.

So I can kick myself for getting riled by replies to a Tweet I fired off on Friday night, although in my defence my critics weren’t faceless strangers, they were people I know, associated with a very good school: one that deserves, and gets, a lot of praise from me and others whose acclamation means a lot more than my low level opinions.

And that particular school was infinitely far from my mind when I tweeted that I was at the cricket dinner of St Stithians College and that I regarded them as the top cricket school in the land.

Quick as a flash, there was a reply from a very senior person in their community, with the results of the February fixture between the two schools attached, showing that, first team game aside, his school had by far the better of the results that day.

Fair play. I was guilty of a mistake that I often criticise others for: I confused the result of the first team game with the overall performance of the school on the day. We shouldn’t do that, but we all do anyway.

When I, and everyone else, celebrated the success of the school in question’s 1^st rugby team this year we weren’t looking at historical context – this was by far their most successful season in many years - neither were we necessarily looking at the overall balance of results in individual fixtures.

They would have come out on top of most of those, I’m sure, although given the quality of their opposition, I know there were probably one or two days where they were on the losing end, across the board.

No, in my opinion, that was the top rugby school in these parts, one of the best in the land, and all I had to base that opinion on were the results of the first team games that were trumpeted each week, quite a few of which I attended, and was captivated by their excellence.

So, when I say Saints is the top cricket school in the land, it has to do with the fact that their 1^st team has lost just three games in three and a half seasons – out of close to 80 – that they swept the board in local competitions; that they dominate the under-19 provincial selections, that they have won the national knockout competition two years in row, and that they have two players in the SA under-19 team that will be in action later in the month.

I wasn’t referring to, neither did I know about, the performance of their lower teams in a fixture back in February – although I do know now, thanks to the kindness of the gentleman who attached those results to his tweet.

I never attended a school that achieved the heights that those I report on do. Neither did I, in my teaching days, work at any schools who could match them. But I’ve been doing his for a while now and I can confirm that there are good players and coaches at more than just one school.

So, if someone says something nice about another team, or player, don’t take it as a criticism of yourself. Try instead to widen your vision. Give credit where it’s due and remember that arrogance is not a good thing to display while the young people you are educating are watching.

Enjoy the break. I’ll speak to you from the Khaya Majola Week, at St Stithians in December, where four of their players will be in action for Gauteng.