School rugby's slash and burn culture

The schools rugby season hasn’t started yet – although there could well be some sort of “super” 8,12,16 or whatever, competition somewhere where the boys are already playing games – but the debate is up and running, and it’s not about the good things that the game brings to education.

No, it’s all negative and there are two camps: those who believe that the professionalisation of the game at school level is a good thing and that the standard of play evident at the top schools, and the quality of the players emerging from them, excuses the methods used to get to that level; and those who say it’s daft on all sorts of levels.

No prizes for guessing which side of the fence I’m sitting on.

Among the many articles written on the issues is this one by Mark Keohane:

https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/sport/schoolboy-rugby-corrupting-the-game-by-selling-its-soul-19086344

He refers to the report on the inquiry into school rugby coming out of New Zealand:

http://files.allblacks.com/community-rugby/NZR-Secondary-School-Report-Executive-Summary.pdf

The articles remind us that things are not healthy, and that the problem is not restricted to just us. It’s what I and others have been going on about for years now. And at heart what we are saying is that while it may be right to begin preparing the next generation of professional players early, that process should not have anything to do with school rugby.

Sure, the schools are where the best coaches, the facilities and the high levels of competition are found, but that’s not a good thing. It’s selling the soul of the game, as Keohane points out. Worse, there is little educational integrity left in what is happening around school rugby. And if there is one thing that’s not debatable it’s that everything that happens in a school has to be educationally accountable in the end.

South Africa won’t remain in the top tier of international rugby if we don’t keep the pipeline of talented young players flowing, no-one’s denying that, what I’m saying is that it isn’t the job of the schools to do that. We also have the unique imperative of having to increase the number of black players at the top levels and, while schools should be, and are, doing that, those running the game can’t outsource that responsibility and wash their hands of it.

I have confessed to conflicting interests in all of this. I’m a lover of schoolboy rugby, of both types. I love going to the Easter rugby festivals to watch some of the “top 10” teams play, and I go to the Craven Week every year and I’m always astounded at the quality of the teams and by the talent on show.

But I also love hearing that when King Edward play Maritzburg College, for example, that there will be 23 rugby matches on the day, and I enjoyed going to King David Victory Park, for example, on a Wednesday to see them play a 12 a-side game against Saheti (reduced in numbers because of the BokSmart regulations which, in that case, didn’t do the game much good); and I especially enjoyed watching Roosevelt play Greenside – in a game with 15 black players in each team, refereed by a white woman – and hearing the players respectfully call her ma’am and abide by all her decisions without question.

You cannot argue that both types of school rugby aren’t important and valuable. If only they could both continue to thrive, side, by side. But they can’t, and they don’t anymore. The elite, professional side of the game is murdering the other one and the killers, with blood on their hands, are those who believe that winning 1^st team rugby games is the primary measure of success for a school and that school rugby is where the preparation of players for the professional game should take place. Those who support what’s going on, or condone the practices adopted to make these things happen are also culpable.

The unsavoury practices that take place have been listed often enough. The one getting most attention right now is recruitment of players. That’s the big one – if you strip the other schools of their talent so that your team can be stronger you are encouraging them to give up and you are creating a small pool of super schools that no-one else is good enough to play against. If you can’t see why that’s bad then you aren’t paying attention.

Then there’s doping. The six 2018 Craven Week players bust for steroids is, by definition, just the tip of the ice berg. Don’t kid yourselves that all of the muscular giants we see every Saturday morning are clean.

Funding in some schools (and its source is irrelevant) is being used in eye-watering proportions to pay for elite rugby programmes. It’s being used to pay for bursaries, gymnasiums, coaches, professional support staff, all aimed at victory for the first team squad – 30 odd-boys in schools with 1 000 pupils typically – where’s the educational accountability in that?

It’s slash and burn agriculture. A few schools can brag about their top 10 finishes in the rankings and they may in the years to come see a handful of their ex-pupils make provincial teams, or even the Springboks, but they are leaving a desert around them.

That fun, mass participation, part of the game is disappearing, those smaller schools who pay low-key Wednesday rugby are opting for other sports and the majority of players in all the schools are simply not enjoying it anymore. Fewer and fewer of them carry on playing after school.

That’s what Keo, and the New Zealand report, mean when they say that the professionalisation of rugby at school level is killing the game. And because everyone knows that it’s happening, it really is murder.