I’m sure many of you, since you have already shown you are crazy enough
to read the nonsense I spew in this space, are also readers, like I am, of
Bill’s Rugby Blog, Views from the armchair.
Old Bill, the writer, is incredibly knowledgeable and does massive
research into what he writes about (I should be doing some of that), but he
does need a good sub-editor – his pieces are often quite long.
Anyway, in a recent offering he says
rugby is at the crossroads. “Rugby has sold its soul to the Devil,” he writes,
“a deal was made back in 1995 at those crossroads where amateurism and
professionalism crossed paths. It was a deal that promised many benefits, in
the form of massive broadcasting deals, huge salary packages for the players,
and superior quality rugby for the supporters and fans.
“And it is a deal that has not worked
out nearly as well as expected.”
And rugby’s at at a place where an
offer of redemption versus eventual oblivion is on the table again, he
believes. “In essence, Professional Rugby is a failure at the box-office and on
the balance sheet,” he says, then goes on to describe how and why World Rugby
and all the rugby playing nations are, basically, bankrupt.
It’s a great read:
It’s a failing industry, is his point, so we have to ask why we believe
it’s a good thing for schools to be justifying the way in which they are
running their rugby programmes in terms of preparing boys for a future as
professionals, working in that industry.
And you can add to that the story
going around at the moment that South Africa’s rugby companies are looking to
cut the numbers of professional players on their books by half.
So, equating school rugby programmes as a way of preparing boys for
future careers with, say, teaching maths and science to potential engineers and
technicians, is reckless and dishonest.
Tenda Mtwararira is the only current Springbok who has played more than
100 Tests. He made his debut in 2008 – a 10 year career at the top.
Of the other centurions, Victor Matfield went longest – 15 years. Jean
de Villiers played for 13 years, Bryan Habana for 12, with Percy Montgomery and
John Smit both having 11 year-long careers.
Matfield, of course, took a three year break in the middle. The point is
that these extraordinary players were at the top of their careers for only roughly
a decade.
And they are the only six, out of all the Springboks in their era. There
are provincial and franchise players who last longer, but they earn less and,
given the bigger numbers, the odds of making it at that level are even slimmer
than for the Springboks.
So, to put dreams of World Cup glory in the heads of 16 year-old is
fine, it’s part of the job, I guess. But don’t justify all the shenanigans that
go in in schools rugby in terms of preparing boys for long and lucrative
careers in the game.
No. Let’s face it, winning is the dominant value and there are schools
that are prepared to go to all sorts of lengths to win games and appear at the
top of the rankings.
We all know what those lengths are and among the most odious of them is the
luring of players who are doing well where they are to your school. It happened
last week – and here I confess to being a little partisan – when a grade 11 boy
who had a decent Craven Week for the Golden Lions began school at a school that
is in the Boland, but supplies players to the Western Province provincial
teams.
There was no communication between the schools prior to his move and, I
believe there’s an insistence that the school has not given him a bursary. Well,
someone has paid to entice him to change schools for his matric year.
In spreading this story I’ve been given a variety of reasons why a
player at a good rugby school would want to move after learning the game, along
with friends of four years or longer, at the school he was at.
I don’t buy any of them, but the one that really is rubbish is the one
that goes that he has a better chance of becoming a professional player if he
attends a top school.
There’s a callous cruelty to knowingly making empty promises.
Politicians do that, not educators.
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