School rugby programmes have to be run by the community

 

Allan Miles’ excellent blog piece on the only two choices in school rugby programmes – go pro and become an academy, or remain a school with all that implies: - https://coachtalk.wordpress.com/2025/04/22/the-real-cost-of-the-schoolboy-rugby-dream/ - set me off again.

I went through some old stuff, looking for something I wrote a while ago about the downside of outsourcing part of the educational process, which I remember equating to a community opting out of its responsibility to raise its children.

I found the blog and was thinking of doing a little bit of cut and paste plagiarism. After reading it, though, I think it can stand with republication in full (with the odd bit left out). It was written back in 2020, nothing’s changed since then, really. Here it is.

American author Peter Block is an authority on the power of the community and he advocates for communities to take responsibility for the raising of their children. He argues that our children aren’t raised by communities anymore. Instead, we pay outsiders to raise our children – teachers, counsellors, coaches, youth workers, nutritionists, doctors etc.

We also pay service providers to treat and comfort the ill, for our safety and to take care of the elderly: all things, according to Block, that were taken care of in the community once. In the process we fall prey to smart marketing and advertising and we are manipulated into wanting things by those who are making money from the system.

Modern schooling is part of that. People chase after success and achievement and are prepared to pay for it, sometimes very dearly. It’s apparent everywhere in education, including sport. Few will argue with the principle that school sport is part of the educational process and, therefore, part of raising a child. I would argue that a school is part of its community and through its sporting programme the school, together with the community it serves, has a responsibility to guide children on their path to responsible adulthood.

A school cannot abdicate that responsibility, neither can it outsource it. You can bring in coaches and conditioning experts and buy the best equipment. You can professionalise your rugby programme, and that will bring positive results, and that’s fine. But if paid-for elements of the consumer system take control of the process you are heading for disaster, and the road to hell, in this case, is paved with the good intentions of the new media that praises to the heavens the professionalisation of sport at school level and calls for more and more of it.

A professional programme will produce excellent young players and some of them will go on to become professionals. Only a fraction will make it, though, and at some stage you have to question the amount of money spent on them and wonder about the rest of the players in the school. As a school community, you have a responsibility to raise all your children, not just the stars.

In any organised game the whole point is to win. You’d be wasting everyone’s time, and it would be an insult to your opponents if you went into competition without trying to be victorious. Teachers and coaches wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t prepare their teams with the goal of winning games in mind.

The question of course is how far you are prepared to go. Winning matches is certainly the aim, but do you make winning your dominant value? Honourable men, remember, are prepared to die for their values. That’s ridiculous, of course, but when you make winning the value by which you live, then you have no choice but to do everything you can to win. You have to win at all costs.

Schools are educational institutions, nothing else. Rugby at school level is part of the educational process and it falls under the principal. It doesn’t matter if there’s a trust that’s funding bursaries, or if the old boys are paying the salary of the coach, the principal is in charge and takes responsibility for everything that involves the school.

And the principal is expected to make education the priority. That’s not optional, it’s his or her job. Every decision has to be educationally accountable – is the action taken in the best interests of the learners? There’s no room for debate in that. It’s educationally sound to insist that all boys sent out onto the rugby field are well-taught, well-conditioned and have the necessary skills. The principal can demand from the coaches that the teams are motivated and have a desire to win. But the principal cannot demand victory and if his side loses despite all of the above being done properly, then he should accept it and promote the lessons that come with it. But when winning becomes the dominant value, educational considerations are often abandoned, along with the spirit of the game. 

More skilful, better-conditioned players are obviously a good thing and if a school’s high quality rugby programme sets a player on the path to a professional career, then that school has done its job in terms of vocational preparation and it has reason to be proud. Achieving these things requires a professional approach and as long as that approach is educationally accountable, every step of the way, then you cannot fault it.

It isn’t always, however. Often the professional, rugby academy way of doing things is described as putting the player and his holistic education first, but you don’t have to dig too deep to discover that the real objective is producing players who can help the school’s teams win matches. It’s part of the win at all costs outlook and some principals, I’m afraid, aren’t always entirely honest about it. They will speak about educational values but are quite happy to allow all sorts of things to happen, as long as their teams keep winning.

When the school commoditises sport provision and pays money to people from outside of the community to run its rugby programmes it is usually doing so because it feels it has to win. The school’s value is tied to the performance of its 1^st rugby team, so winning becomes all important.

The raising of the children by the community has been taken over by the professionals and because it’s a case of win at any cost, the costs, financial and in educational principles are not important.

There are all sorts of mean-spirited, unethical, and downright illegal practices that follow, all in the name of winning. Scorched Earth recruitment practices, early specialisation, over-training and substance abuse are only some of those.

If we were really committed to educational values in school sport we should hand the raising of the children back to the community, with the school playing a central role in that, and send the professionals to the professional game where they belong.

The KES vs Northwood game was abandoned. Who won? Who cares?

 

Old fart alert. It’s me again with my (some say) antiquated ideas about school sport and the role of winning and losing when children are playing games that are part of their educational journey.

 

I know, it was back in the latter half of the last century when I last coached a team, but I do remember that the idea of playing a game is to win it, that it’s the job of those put in charge to prepare the players as best they can, and that the players need to produce maximum effort in the cause of victory.

 

That’s the educational value of the exercise, and if it’s all done properly then the result of the game, while it will cause both great joy and awful sorrow for a while, really doesn’t matter.

 

I’ve gone down this route again after being at the KES Easter Festival when the game between the hosts and Northwood on Monday was called off, seven minutes into the second half. Northwood were 12-7 ahead at that stage, having led 12-0 at half time. KES scored shortly after the break and it was looking like they were about to launch a stirring comeback.

 

Then lightning in the area set the warning siren off and, immediately, the game was stopped and everyone was instructed to find cover. It was a pity that we were robbed of what might have been a great spectacle, but that was that. I went into the festival office in the cricket museum where I’d been working all weekend and eaves dropped on the radio conversations and heard, half an hour later, that the game was off.

 

The sun was out by then and the all-clear sounded minutes later but, I understood, Northwood still had a bus trip back to Durban ahead of them and it’s school on Tuesday, so resuming the game was not really on. That’s an educational decision and it was spot on.

 

It’s a ‘no result’ I heard someone say and that’s right, I thought.

 

Then, on Tuesday morning, I awoke to see on social media that the contest was reported as a win for Northwood, along with a debate on whether that was right or wrong. SupersportSchools published it on their Facebook page, which is pretty official, but then again they’d had their graphic artist prepare the results template with the badges of the schools on it ahead of time and they were always going to use it.

 

I’ve already said that results don’t matter, so who cares if people want to declare a winner under the circumstances? There was talk in the comment threads on Facebook about what constitutes a game, or not, and excerpts of regulations of various competitions were quoted. Someone said the referee declared it a result, which was weird, and wrong, because the referee – more than anyone else in the world – is not supposed to care about who wins or loses the game. If no-one wins, that’s the perfect outcome for him, come to think of it.

 

In my opinion, this was an easy one. It’s a festival remember. That’s the one type of competition when everyone should agree with me – the results count for nothing at all. You want to win, of course, but the games are put on for the sake of playing them only.

So, you don’t have to bother yourself with whether there was a winner or a loser. Northwood were brilliant in the first half, and KES were right back in the game when it was called off – that should be enough. 

It was for an old fart like me.  

Redemption for The Reds on Day1 of their Easter Festival

 

If you scripted a scenario for game in which the King Edward Reds laid the ghost of Stellenbosch to rest, once and for all, you could not have done a better job than what actually transpired in the final game of the opening day of the 21^st Standard Bank KES Easter Festival in Houghton on Saturday.

They put an end to their run of defeats with a 20-17 win over Rondebosch, and they did it at home, in front of a capacity crowd. Rondebosch came to Joburg unbeaten, with some big scalps on their belt and people are expecting them to finish right near the top of the rankings this year.

They may still do that – it certainly looked that way when they went straight on the attack from the kickoff and scored a try in the opening minute. What happened next must have surprised them, however. They came up against the most bloody-minded and courageous defensive effort that you are likely to see in a long time, with wave after wave of attack being repulsed on the Reds goal line.

When KES did eventually break break free, they went down to the other end and centre Sam Smith forced his way over under a pile of bodies for KES to take the lead. Bosch got another try soon after that, before Regan McGurk put the home side ahead, 14-10, a lead they never relinquished.

As much as anything, that defensive effort showed that the stumble against Paarl Gim was just a blip, and that this team does indeed have heaps of heart and courage, and that the boys certainly do know how to stop big runners in their tracks.

KES added two later penalties and led 20-10 for almost all of the second half before Rondebosch got a late try following a flurry of penalties going their way.

It was a great ending to what was one of the best days of festival rugby at KES in many years.

In the curtain-raiser, Jeppe also laid a ghost to rest following their 50-point defeat to Monument last weekend. Their skilful backs really turned it on and they scored six tries in their 38-17 win over Selborne.

The Affies vs Noordheuwel clash was billed as possibly the game of the day, and it didn’t disappoint. The sides are two of heavyweights up in this part of the country and they went at each other, hammer and tongs, for three quarters of the game before Affies scored two late tries to draw clear and win 45-27. The score was 26-15 to Affies at halftime and they were 31-27 up with 10 minutes to go.

In earlier action, the Hudson Park vs Eldoraigne clash was a thriller. It was a contrast of styles – direct play and big forwards from Eldoraigne and all-out trick running from Hudson Park. The sides swopped tries throughout the second half, with Hudson coming out ahead 32-26 at the end – a result that was popular with the big crowd that had begun to accumulate.

Northwood was too strong for Pearson in the opening game of the day, winning 61-27. Pearson’s scrumhalf, Denilo Jordaan, did score the try of the day, however. He took a tap penalty behind the goal line in the tuckshop corner, and weaved his way through the entire opposition team, to score under the scoreboard – you don’t see that every day.

Parktown was brave to start with against Queens College, but they couldn’t deal with the elusive running of the Queens backs and the went down 47-15.

I don’t recall seeing a bigger crowd at the festival and they got their money’s worth. Sunday is a rest day and we there will be more of the same on Monday.

It was all action at the KES Festival and the action hasn't even started

 

I am always amazed at the way that those running school sport find a way to heap more and more upon themselves in the cause of providing opportunities to get the children out there, playing.

Thursday was actually Day 0 at the Standard Bank KES Easter Festival – the 21^st one – but you wouldn’t think so if you went there. Last year it was decided to cut the number of rugby games played at the festival from three to two, in the interests of player safety. There is so much school rugby being played at this time of the year now that the Easter Festivals are no longer the early-season hit-out that the coaches use to do their final team selections, making three games ideal.

So, you’d think the lot that run the KES Festival - and it seems to be the same faces, led by the indefatigable Derron van Eeden, year after year – would use the quiet day to put the final touches to the mammoth task of squeezing everything in. You’d be wrong. They laid on seven rugby games – one more than on an official festival day – and gave those who did come along to watch a look at the work that the Golden Lions Union is doing in the townships of our city.

There were two under-13 Youth Club matches; games involving U16 and U18 girls team from their programme in that area; and a game between the KES 2^nd team and an U18 side selected from all their clubs.

That meant new faces and jersey colours at the festival, and the eye-opening experience of seeing that girls can play this game, and very well too. But that wasn’t enough.

The KES U15A and U16A teams played against Marais Viljoen. The Alberton school is not one that the school has met often down the years, but there is new rugby management there and, I’m sure, they were keen to see how they go against the best of English opposition, Their U15s have work to do, but the U16s gave the very good KES side some stern opposition and there are some boys there who can play.

Thursday is, of course, officially Day 1 as far as the hockey side of the Easter festival is concerned. Half a day, actually, as school was still on. The Red Sticks confirmed that they will be side to watch this year with an emphatic win over Glenwood, while the highly-ranked Maritzburg College and Jeppe had comfortable wins too. There’s a lot of hockey still to be played over the weekend – and they don’t take Sunday off.

The 1^st team rugby action gets going on Saturday and the schedule laid on is as intriguing as it has been for years. As a taster: Affies are playing Noordheuwel at 12.45pm on Saturday, ahead of games between Jeppe and Selborne; and KES against Rondebosch.

Queens College are here again with, I’m hoping, their usual big contingent of rowdy Joburg-based old boys; as is Northwood, the rising stars in Durban. The newcomers this year are Pearson High School, a Gqeberha school we’ve heard a lot about, but rarely see in these parts.

It’s going to be a good Easter,

Results

Hockey - Jeppe 4 Eldoraigne 1, Parktown 3 St Charles 1, Maritzburg College 4 Helpmekaar 1, KES 6 Glenwood 0, Northwood 2 Waterkloof 0.

Rugby - Eldorado Park U13 36 Westbury U13 0, Alexandra Wolves U13 75 Kagiso Sting U13 0, Golden Lions U16 Girls A 52 Golden Lions U16 Girls B 0, Golden Lions U18 Girls A 50 Golden Lions U18 Girls B 0, KES U15A 50 Marais Viljoen U15A 0, KES U16A 38 Marais Viljoen U16A 21, KES 2^nd XV 52 Golden Lions Development 3.