Boland is Boland, everywhere except at the Craven Week

Exactly one year ago, I wrote an article for SARugbyMag arguing that players from the Paarl and Stellenbosch schools should represent Boland and not Western Province at the Craven Week.

Here’s a link to it:

https://www.sarugbymag.co.za/why-do-bolands-best-play-for-wp/

Yesterday the Golden Lions lost to the Western Province XV at the 2019 edition of the week at Grey College in Bloemfontein and, because I’m no longer a reporter, I can declare that I’m a supporter, and it wasn’t much fun watching the game on TV.

The Lions were beaten fair and square, by a “B” team with several players in its ranks that would comfortably have made their team, and that of the other provincial teams that I watched in pre-Craven Week warmup games.

I did enjoy the Afrikaans commentary on SuperSport though, particularly that of Marco Botha – a Media 24 man who attended many Craven Weeks as a rugby writer and has a deft turn of colourful Afrikaans phrases.

It was one those which took me back to what I said last year. He told us, in Afrikaans, that one of the WP players was the Boland hurdles champion, so he could jump over the ruck rather than go around it. A clever image, but, what?!

Why does he do athletics for Boland and play rugby for Western Province?

That’s the issue. It’s not a new one, nor is it anything that will change any time soon, but that doesn’t mean I’m going along with it quietly, like everyone else seems to be doing.

I’ve still not been able ascertain how this situation came about, or who leaned on who in 2002 when after one year of fair play with everyone playing for the provinces that they lived in, the SA Schools Rugby authorities did a U-turn and allowed the Paarl schools back in to WP again.

After my column was published last year someone did offer an interesting explanation, one rooted in old historical social and political alliances which saw the cream of Paarl society distance itself from those who live on the other side of the Berg River. I haven't been able to find out if that was true. 

If you look at Tuesday’s team sheet you’ll see that 14 of the 23 players in the WP team are from schools that belong to the Boland unions of every other sporting code they participate in. There are those who argue that the current arrangement gives opportunities to players at other schools in the Boland to represent their province. That argument is flawed, of course. What about the 14 places in the WP XV that could have been filled by players from schools in Cape Town or other areas who actually fall within the Union’s boundaries?

Sure, the system allows WP to send four teams to the under-18 Youth Weeks, but it also means that Boland only sends two. If we really have opportunities for players at heart, what’s wrong with that being the other way around?

No. We are dealing here with the same old issue in school rugby – winning is what counts, and the morality of how you win doesn’t really matter.

You cannot justify, on any grounds other than the (undisputed) excellence of the Western Province Schools rugby teams, a setup where boys play cricket for Boland and rugby for WP. It’s wrong, and it taints, for me, any success those teams have – especially, I confess, when the Golden Lions are on the receiving end.