The effective closedown of school sport during this Covid mess gave me the opportunity to trawl my memory and write down some of the things that have stood out for me during my lifetime of school sport. Some people have been kind enough to suggest that I collect them into a book. I've done that now, but I don't really know where to go next - I don't think it's something worth publishing, really, but I do think there are those who, like me, have a deep interest in sport as part of the educational process and who would like to read some of it.
So, until I decide what to do with it, I'm going to put a few bits and pieces up here and see what the reaction is.
Here's a chapter on some special memories.
LOOKING back on my 40 years of involvement in school sport, there are some events and occasions that have faded into sketchy recollection. There were others, however, that were so extraordinary that they remain sharply etched in my memory. Part of my of my motivation for writing this book has been to get those things down on paper before they too disappear from my consciousness.
Here are some that stand out from them:
1 Lee Barnard
I’m sometimes asked what the best school rugby game I’ve seen was, and my answer is one from a time before I was a sports reporter, from before I was even a teacher.
I was on the No.10 bus going down Louis Botha Avenue on the way to my Orange Grove home from varsity one Monday afternoon in 1973 and I got off in Yeoville because there was obviously something going on at King Edward VII School.
It turned out to be their last rugby game of the season (and, I found out, they were still unbeaten at that stage). The opponents were Union High from Graaf-Reniet, who they played regularly in those days. Union were leading handily when I arrived, close to half time.
KES played downhill on their notoriously sloping field in the second half, and as far as I can remember they clawed their way back to be two or three points down, in injury-time, in the near dark, with their unbeaten record under serious threat.
Their flyhalf that day was skinny buck-toothed kid called Lee Barnard. He had been passing the ball along unselfishly all game and was hardly noticeable. Then, with time elapsed, for the first time in the game he went on a break, he threw two outrageous dummy scissors passes, and crossed over under the posts, untouched.
That day will be remembered forever at KES because Barnard’s action secured an unbeaten season for them. I will remember it because it was the day that I fell in love with schoolboy rugby.
2 The Paarl Derby
There is nothing quite like the Paarl Boys’ High vs Paarl Gimnasium rugby derby. First National Bank – the game was one of the FNB Classic Clashes then – flew me down there one year to experience it for myself, and it’s something I’ll never forget.
I went down a day in advance and got to feel some of the fever that infects the town for the entire week leading up to the Saturday afternoon 1st team rugby game. The whole place is either two shades of blue or green and maroon, even the trees are bandaged in the colours of the respective schools. And there is no neutrality. Everyone declares their allegiance loud and clear, except for some of the retailers who don’t want to alienate their customers, and who festoon their doorways and their window displays in the colours of both schools.
It’s not just about the rugby games either. It’s a full on interschools week featuring golf, chess, hockey for boys and girls and netball for girls. Paarl Girls’ High joins in to play against the girls of the co-ed Paarl Gimnasium. There are also old boys games and games between the respective primary schools. I was told when I was there that there are even tractor races on the local farms, with the machines painted appropriately. We were never able to confirm that, though so it may be apocryphal.
On the Saturday the top four under-19 rugby teams meet, culminating with the firsts at 4pm at the Faure Street Stadium in downtown Paarl. The stadium holds 25 000 and it’s always packed to the rafters. It is, I believe, the biggest crowd to watch a schoolboy rugby game, anywhere. If they moved it to Newlands, they could probably double the numbers. I don’t think the people of Paarl would allow that, though.
3 Benny’s Sports Academy
One icy winter’s morning I travelled with the excellent PR people from Intune Communications to Louis Trichardt in Limpopo province to visit Benny’s Sports Academy.
Intune were doing the publicity for the Danone Nations Cup, an under-12 international soccer tournament and Benny’s were the SA champions that year. We went to see their preparations ahead of going to the the world finals in Paris in a few weeks later.
Benny’s Sports Academy sounds like a 1st world centre of development where talented kids get top coaching and off the field support, but it isn’t. It’s a little school in a village called Tshiozwi, one hour outside of Louis Trichardt, which is about as rural as you can get.
And yet there’s greatness there, achieved on a gravel football pitch, in classrooms built out of handmade bricks, and by children fed by women cooking on open fires under a thatched shelter.
The school runs from grade 0 to 12, so they have a high school too and their under-19 team, along with the under-12s have been Limpopo provincial champions five times. In the case of the under-19 tournament that means they have won a total of R500 000 in infrastructure funding over the years. The money has been put to good use in developing the educational facilities, including a spanky new hall where we were served a great lunch prepared by the same women who cook for the kids each day.
They are battling there. One of the purposes of the visit, I found out, was to take the players food to supplement their diet. Danone filled a trailer with their products – yoghurt, Jungle Oats, energy bars and fruit juice – and bought a couple of crates of eggs on the way, to hand over to the school.
So how come they shine so brightly? It’s impossible to know from a one-day visit, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t come down to leadership. The school, it seems, is a hybrid private-public one. It’s a combined school run by the state, which pays the salaries of a handful of teachers in a small school like that, and allocates the meagre other funding that all schools get. The sports academy side is owned by David Mufumadi (nickname: Benny), a Louis Trichardt furniture store manager who funds it largely out of his own pocket. The principal is Sindane Nqobile, and between them they clearly run a tight ship.
The coaches are teachers and the teachers are dedicated and hard-working (the matric pass rate is over 90%). It’s an inspiring story, and well worth getting up early on a chilly morning to see.
4 Put your jacket on
In my teaching days I was deeply involved in swimming and water polo administration and, because I still wanted to be part of it when I moved on to the newspaper, I used to volunteer in my early years to cover the SA National Aquatic Championships. It wasn’t part of my job, but even then management cost-cutting meant that the Independent group never assigned someone to go to them, so my sports editor agreed.
That’s how I found myself at the nationals in Pretoria one year, with accreditation that got me into the prize-giving dinner at the end of the week.
They stopped having those dinners later on, there were too many incidents involving under-age drinking and bad behaviour as the swimmers – most of whom were still at school – over-celebrated the release of the pressure they were under.
The dress code for the teams was “number ones”: provincial blazer and tie and, for those who had been awarded them, national colours. The function was held in the ‘skilpadsaal’ at the University of Pretoria, and it was hot in there that night. So, most of the swimmers has taken their blazers off and draped them over their chairs.
There were speeches and a long procession of trophies being handed over. I couldn’t help noticing that just about every recipient would go up jacketless. Their blazers remained on the backs of their chairs, even those fabulous green and gold ones that they had worked so hard for and which, I’m sure, they didn’t get much opportunity to wear.
Then a young man at the table next to ours was called up. He stood, straightened his tie, put his Northerns blazer on and buttoned it up before he walked to the stage. He passed right next to me when he returned to his seat and I couldn’t resist grabbing his arm and asking him, “what school are you at?” His reply was “Pretoria Boys’ High”.
I must have nodded quietly to myself. That sort of action was always insisted on at all the boys schools that I’d interacted with. The swimmer – I regret that I can’t recall his name – was at Pretoria but he could have been at any of the other institutions where attention to the little things is important – it’s one of the ingredients of their ongoing success stories.
I saw that night at Tukkies that it doesn’t happen everywhere.
5 Making some noise
In 1998 Jorg Hoffman a German international swimmer and former 400m and 1500m freestyle world record holder was in South Africa to swim in the Midmar Mile (which he won) and John Wright, an Australian swimming coach who worked in Joburg for a while and who was something of a showman, got him to attend the Girls Schools interhigh gala at Ellis Park while he was here.
He also arranged for him to race against the girls. It was an 800m freestyle race. Jorg on his own took on a 16 x 50m relay team made up of the two fastest swimmers from each of the eight schools who were there.
The girls interhigh at Ellis Park was, in those days, the noisiest event in Joburg sport. The schools bring an allocation of spectators – there isn’t enough room for all – and they pack them in like sardines. The city council even used to bring temporary stands in from their other pools and fields to increase the capacity.
And those girls scream, as only they can do, non-stop for the entire morning. That’s in a normal year, you can imagine the decibel level during that Jorge vs the girls of Joburg race.
Hoffman was a bit of a showman himself, it turned out. He would slow down in the middle of each leg, allowing the schoolgirl to pass him and then put his head down and catch her at the end of the length. His tumble turns were stylised displays, he’d arch his legs theatrically at the wall and glide the first 10 or 15m of the next length, then repeat his cat and mouse game, every time.
The anchor leg for that 16-girl team was swum by a girl from St Mary’s. Her name was Joanne Shuttleworth and she was a proper swimmer. She had been a South African champion through the age groups and had already represented her province at senior national level. Jorg gave her his customary start at the beginning of that final leg while he did his dramatic turn and glide and, when he looked up she was halfway down the pool already!
He clearly realised he was in trouble and had to put in 100% to catch her. He did that right at the wall and the electronic timing device showed that he had won by a few hundredths of a second. Imagine the noise during that final 50m.
It was the most exciting swimming race I have ever seen outside, of course, of that mens 4 X 100 relay at the Athens Olympics in 2004.
6 James Small
In around 1987 I took my Highlands North 1st team to play against Greenside. The late James Small was their fullback and he had quite a reputation. He was the star of the co-ed schools athletics scene and had helped Greenside to a great rugby season that year.
So, we had tried to make plans to contain him. We never had to use them, to start with anyway. He never joined the backline, he kicked the ball back to where it came from whenever it came to him and, otherwise, he was practically invisible. We were leading quite comfortably halfway through the second half and I remember asking my co-coach, sarcastically, if James was actually playing that day.
Then, with 10 minutes to go, he suddenly woke up and went beserk. He began running at us and we couldn’t stop him. He scored two tries and laid on two more and a 10 point lead for us became a 20 point defeat in the wink of an eye.
My players told me later that the Greenside boys said that sort of thing had happened before – it depended on whether James had had a rough night before the game. He was a troubled youth even then, it seems.
It was the most remarkable display on a rugby field that I had seen in my days as a coach. James made the Craven Week team and SA Schools later that year and went on to become one of our greatest Springbok wings. We got a brief glimpse of that greatness at Greenside that Saturday morning.
7 They’re only children
In my days as editor of the School Sport supplement of the Saturday Star I felt I needed to run a weekly column by a coach. I tried out a few and Lucky Stylianou, the former Kaizer Chiefs player and youth coach, who was teaching at Saheti School was the one that stuck.
It was a stroke of luck for us. For the next five years he sent us an article very week and it turned out he was far more than a good technical coach, he was deep thinker about the role of sport in the development of children. His columns got a great response from readers. I know he has gathered the best of them into a book that hasn’t been published yet, it really should be.
One of the women who worked with Lucky at Saheti told me once that the problem with him was that, like most Greek men, he saw himself as a direct successor to the ancient Greek philosophers and he looked at the world though that lens.
I don’t know about that, but I do know that he has a philosophical, long-game view on winning and losing that resonated with me perfectly.
It was an incident involving Lucky as a coach some years before, that was one of the events that stands out in my school sport memories. It was at a primary schools soccer tournament at Crawford College in Benrose. Lucky was there with the Saheti team.
The final, between two other schools, ended in a draw and was still deadlocked after extra time, so in the gathering gloom, it went into a penalty shot out, as the tournament regulations stipulated. At the end of two rounds of spot kicks the scores were still even so it went into a third. By then the 12 year-old players were so emotional and nervous that the first four kicks were missed, and the fifth one didn’t even reach the goalkeeper.
Those children were clearly overwhelmed. Then an incensed Lucky stepped up out of the crowd. He called the boys off the field and told the organisers that it was enough. He reminded them that these were only children and told them if they had to award a cup, the teams could share it, but there would be no more penalties taken that day. They, somewhat shame-faced, agreed.
It was quite remarkable. I became a Lucky Stylianou fan that day and it had nothing to do with the fact that he had played 250 games for Kaizer Chiefs.
8 Bryce Parsons
Bryce Parsons is the latest of a long list of stars to come out of King Edward VII School. I watched Adam Blacher play for them, and Nic Pothas and Vaughn Van Jaaarsveld, Graeme Smith, Neil Mc Kenzie and Quinton de Kock.
KES has been consistently the top performing cricket school in Joburg over the 40 years that I’ve been involved. There are pretenders to that title but they have some way to go to match their track record.
Bryce achieved more than most of those stars did while still at school, but then again he had more opportunities. He played SA Schools, he was named the Khaya Majola Week player of the week and the South African under-19 player of the year in 2018 and captained the South African under-19 team on its tour to India and in the home ODI series against Pakistan in 2019.
Out of all his achievements one innings stands out for me. It was at the 2018 Khaya Majola Week in Cape Town when he made 129 not out, off 115 balls against Northerns, at Bishops. I watched it from beginning to end and it was clear that this was someone to watch.
He struck 10 fours and four sixes and together with Jacob Miltz, his captain, who made 60, they got their side to 258/3 in their 50 overs, which was always going to be too much for Northerns, who were dismissed for 177. The win ensured a spot in the “main game’ of the week for Central Gauteng and it cemented a spot in the SA Schools team for Bryce.
He was majestic and controlled, he fed the strike to Miltz who was the senior partner in the beginning, and then cut loose when Miltz went out. It was an individual display that is etched in my memory.
9 Kelsey White
The Joburg co-ed schools A league swimming interhigh gala was another of those noisy, spirit-filled occasions when it used to be staged at Ellis Park. The old pool with its concrete amphitheatre had an atmosphere that lent itself to that. At some stage the Joburg City Council priced itself out the market, and the pool was no longer kept in good condition, so the gala was moved to the Delville pool in Germiston, where it is still staged now. For me, it’s not the same anymore.
It was at Ellis Park, however, that I witnessed an achievement that sticks it my memory. It was the girls open 50m freestyle race and it was won by Kelsey White of Rand Park High School.
Kelsey went on to play water polo at the highest level and was the captain of the SA team for a number of years, including at the World Championships in 2015. She has come out of retirement and is currently in Japan as part of the SA water polo team. She is the 1st team coach at St Mary’s School in Johannesburg.
In her time at Rand Park the school became, for a short period, the top girls water polo team in the land.
The co-ed interhigh, because it features boys and girls in all the age groups, and because the gala has to be completed in half a day, consists mainly of 50m races in all the strokes.
That afternoon Kelsey lined up at the outside lane at Ellis – Rand Park wasn’t one of the fancied schools so they were pushed to the side – against a field that contained top provincial swimmers from Northcliff and Bryanston.
Just over half a minute later she had won the race and the stars in the centre lanes were staring up at the electronic timing scoreboard in disbelief. There was nothing stylish about her swim, it was sheer power, she took one breath in the middle of the pool and swam the last five metres head up, water polo style.
Over two lengths, the thoroughbreds would have smoked her, but over 50m they were outpowered. It was glorious to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment