The season's done and the recruitment scourge is still with us

There’s no reason why you should remember it, but I offered my two cents worth of opinion in this space back in May about the practice of recruiting schoolboy players as if they were full professionals, commodities in the marketing strategies of schools who use the results of their first rugby teams to differentiate themselves.

Here’s a link to that blog – the gist of it was that it might be wise to consider the way they do it in Auckland where a player from a “premier” school cannot play A team sport at a new school unless the principal of the school he came from signs off that he or she is happy that the move was above board.

https://theogarrun.blogspot.com/2018/05/recruitment-let-principals-swear-to-it.html

I’ve put this old scratched record on the turntable again (only the old toppies among you will know what that means) after attending the Iqhawe Week in Joburg last week and having a chat with Stefan Terblanche, the CEO of the SA Rugby Legends. The Iqhawe Week and the Vuka rugby programme are the brain children (can you say that?) of the Legends.

They encourage and promote rugby at schools where the game used to be played and is now under threat of disappearing, and they encourage schools that don’t play to introduce the game. There is no shortage of coaches and mentors among their members and they raise the money to fund the exercise.

Vuka is the interschool programme they run and the Iqhawe Week is an under-15 interprovincial week, run on the same lines as the Craven and Grant Khomo Weeks, featuring only players from schools who field four teams or less.

This was the third one I’ve attended and the standard of play has definitely improved. Terblanche reckons it the best he has seen in the six years it’s been going.

What interested me – and I’m getting to my point now – was seeing some familiar faces there, the same ones I saw at the Craven Week in Paarl. The scouts from the top schools were there, scribbling in their programmes, and adjusting the cheque books in their back pockets, while running their practiced eyes over the players on display.

They were looking for black African players to recruit. Those are what the quota regulations require nowadays and it’s easier (if you have the money) to manufacture rather than buy.

One of then told me that the Legends are happy with their presence – if a player is spotted there and get an offer to go to a top school, that’s good for him. I asked Stefan Terblanche about that and he concurred, but added a condition – the interests of the player have to come first and they will give their blessing if they are happy that he will be helped to fit in and that he won’t be discarded if he doesn’t fulfill the promise seen in him.

It’s complicated. You can’t begrudge a talented player who is at a non-rugby school the opportunity to realise his potential but, at the same time, taking him away is not helping that school’s rugby to improve.

I may be conflicted about that, but I have absolutely no doubt about how I feel about the movement of players between well-established rugby schools – they must just stop it!

Tinus Diedericks, the chairman of the Golden Lions Schools Rugby Association, tells me they have adopted the Auckland model in the North Vaal schools association and this year a player who was not signed off by his former principal was not allowed to play in the 1^st team of his new school.

That can only happen with centrally-run leagues like the North Vaal run. In places where games are all friendlies, arranged by the two schools involved, you have to depend on the heads to act ethically. They don’t all do that, I’m afraid.

I can think of two examples in the season that’s just ended of players from good rugby schools turning up at other good rugby schools without the heads of their formers schools hearing a word until they were gone.

If those players were scouted at the Iqhawe Week I could understand (if not totally accept it) but they were already receiving good coaching and playing against top opposition. They were recruited for one reason only – to help their new teams win matches.

Worse, the heads of the new schools were there when it was agreed that players can’t move without the knowledge and approval of the principal of the school they came from.

If you can’t trust people to comply with self-regulation you have to impose laws. That’s what they do in Auckland, and in the North Vaal leagues. Maybe, now that the season’s over, it’s time to start doing something about it, instead of just letting it all happen again next year.

That’s what I said back in May.