No Craven Week this year, and I'm not that sorry

In other times the Craven Week would have been under way in Port Elizabeth this week. It was cancelled, of course, along with all other school sports events. That was a wise decision, it turns out, seeing the number of infections really began to take off this week, particularly in the Eastern Cape.

It’s the first time since its inception in 1964 that the week hasn’t taken place. The other big schools interprovincial week, the Khaya Majola (previously the Nuffield Week) has seen gaps. Hannes Nienaber, in School of Rugby, points out that the 1955 Nuffield Week was called off because of a polio outbreak, and in 1971, when the so-called Border War was beginning to ramp up, the government decided that the boys must all go to the army straight away and should not be playing cricket.

In 1975 and 1976, Hannes explains the North Vaal Unions – those within the boundaries of the old Transvaal province -   had their own provincial festival because the Transvaal Education Department had moved to a three-term system ahead of the others.

Be that as it may, I’m sitting at home in the first week of July for the second year in a row having gone to just about every Craven Week since 1988. Last year I had a terrible sense of missing out, but at least we could see the games on TV and, besides, it was in Bloemfontein and one should actually be looking for reasons not to go there in the dead of winter.

This year it would have been in balmy Port Elizabeth and there are no games to televise so, I should be really downhearted. I’m not, however. I’ve had a lot of time to think, and it’s because the Craven Week is no longer what it used to be. It may not – for various reasons – survive this hiatus, but even if it does I’m not sure I’ll be that keen to make my annual pilgrimage to (what used to be) the shrine of schoolboy rugby.

Two years ago Coca-Cola ended their 37-year long sponsorship of the Craven Week. Later in that year they also pulled out of their school cricket and soccer commitments, so it seems it was part of a bigger cutback in spending. I’d been going to the week at Coke’s expense for quite a few years, so I knew a bit about how the sponsorship was managed and it was becoming, it seemed to me, a bit of an unhappy marriage in recent times.

The sponsors, through the sports management company they hired to handle things, were starting to interfere more and more and the SA Schools Rugby people, and SA Rugby, weren’t always sensitive to the sponsor’s needs.

And then SuperSport, with its special relationship with SA Rugby, has its demands. All the matches are televised live and they don’t want to air a friendly festival celebrating what people like me believe what is good in rugby. Dr Danie Craven’s principles for the week were quite quickly abandoned and it was turned, in effect, into a TV-friendly knockout tournament.

That’s one of the real reasons why, for me, the Craven Week has lost its charm.  The final fixture of the week, the so-called “main game” was reserved according to Craven for the two teams who played the most attractive rugby in their earlier two outings. I remember Craven storming into the press box at the Basil Kenyon Stadium in 1991 and giving us all an earful because he had seen that game referred to as “the final” in the local paper that morning. It turned out that the guilty party was the SAPA man – a road running specialist with no idea about the traditions – who had speculated on who would get the nod on the Saturday and the Herald had picked the story up.

Throwing the ball around, willy-nilly, wasn’t what was required however. Craven used to speak of effective attractive rugby and you’d never make the make the main game if you didn’t win your earlier encounters. There was the possibility of the unexpected however, and the lesser teams started off their campaigns with at least a chance of catching they eye with their style of play and getting a shot at upsetting one of the big guns.

Not anymore. Looking at the fixtures that were drawn up for the first two days this year, it’s clear that the quarter-final, semi-final, final format so loved by SuperSport (and many of their viewers) was meant to be in place once more.

On Monday Western Province were going to play Border and the Sharks against the Valke. On Tuesday Free State were going to be up against SWD and the Golden Lions would have played the Blue Bulls. Those are quarter-finals, no question, with the winners being matched in the second round – WP vs the Sharks and Free State vs the Lions or Bulls. The rest of the teams were there to make up the numbers.

The fixtures committee do like, if at all possible, to give the host province the final game, so Eastern Province were to be matched with Griquas, giving them an outside chance, depending on the quality of their victory. The matching of the Lions and the Bulls on day one was, some might say, a cynical way, probably WP-directed, to kick one of the two out of the bus at the first stop. I couldn’t possibly comment on that of course.

A Western Province vs Free State (or Lions/Bulls) final would be a great game, worthy of a Saturday morning TV slot. How that matchup would have been made would have had nothing to do with the values and traditions of the Craven Week, however.

I’m sorry I won’t be able to watch it, but I’m glad I won’t have been a witness to the process that got them there.