Not quite what Dr Craven had in mind

My friend Carl Fabian wrote a touching piece on his ruggas.co.za website about the Craven Week for the learners with special educational needs (LSEN) schools. And yes it is a Craven Week – Danie Craven sanctioned the use of his name for four rugby weeks: the high and primary schools Craven Weeks, the Craven Week for LSEN schools (called Special Schools back then), and a week for mine apprentices.

http://www.youthweeks.ruggas.co.za/?p=6943

I don’t think the mines week exists anymore, I couldn’t find any reference to it. The others are going strong and, according to Carl, it seems, the LSEN Week is the one that is most closely sticks to what Craven had in mind when he first approved of schools interprovincial festivals.

He quotes a letter he “wrote” to Craven in 2016 in which he said: “The LSEN booitjies are still playing the game your way. They do not play rugby, Doc, hulle jol ruggas.”

He then goes on to bemoan the fact that the Academy Week organisers saw fit to match the selected national LSEN team and the LSEN XV against each other on the final day of the week in Bloemfontein this year. The boys, apparently, celebrated the fact that they were there at all and played that way – you wouldn’t expect anything else from those kids, would you? But before the game, Fabian says, one of them asked him: “Sir, why can’t we pay against the normal boys?” Touching.

It’s a window into a greater malaise. When asked if they would pit the Western Province and Western Province XV sides against each other in the main game, which seemed a likely scenario at one stage, an SA Schools Rugby official said yes. The teams are ranked, he said, and if those two were numbers one and two, they would meet in the final.

That is so far from Craven’s thinking that I would suggest that if they find a sponsor to replace Coca-Cola, they should consider dropping his name and name the week after it.

And I guess we will all have to get used to the fact that the Craven Week is not the showpiece of schools rugby that it used to be. Danie Craven’s principles are what made it special, along with the fact that we were seeing the cream of that generation’s players in action. That’s just not the case in either instance anymore.

Transformation of the game is absolutely necessary, but forcing all the teams to have more than 50% of their squads made up of black players at this level is not the way to do it. Good rugby players come from good teams, via good coaching and by playing with other good players against top opposition. That’s what happens in the top schools, week after week. The problem is that, outside of the Western and Eastern Cape, the top schools are fielding teams that are still mainly white.

If we are going to transform the game effectively it has to start at individual school level. Western Province is thriving because it, for a long time now, chooses its teams on merit – there’s no need for a quota there. There are some great black players in the teams from the other provinces, but many of them were struggling to find 12 who could play against the best in the land, and it showed in Bloemfontein last week.