My top 10 for 2024

 

It’s time again for my little end-of-the-year top 10 school sport highlights list. It’s an entirely subjective exercise, based only on teams and players that I actually saw in action, although – mercifully, as I get older and more home-bound – I’ve included things I saw on TV (or computer), courtesy of the wonderful innovation of SuperSport schools.

SuperSport Schools has been a game-changer for me and my trivial list year can include, as you’ll see, references to the School Boat Race, and the SA Schools Water Polo Champs, and I can say I was there – via my laptop and an HDMI cable.

1. So, and I think this is going to be a perennial, highlight number one has to be the growth in depth and quality of the SuperSport Schools coverage. I was able to watch the biggest rugby derbies, the interprovincial hockey and rugby weeks, the Boat Race and the SA Schools Water Polo tournament, while never leaving my couch. Who could have imagined that?

2. One of my other hardy perennials hasn’t stood the test of time, I’m afraid. St Benedict’s were comfortable winners of the SA Schools Rowing Championships for the 30th consecutive year and they aren’t going anywhere. They also won the schools boat race for the seventh year in a row. But the second part of this regular “cut-and-paste” paragraph had to be deleted: Northcliff High never won the Joburg co-ed schools athletics interhigh. They ruled for the previous 25 years in a row, but not in 2024. They relinquished the title in the only way most of us thought would ever be possible – they retired undefeated. The school has decided to align themselves with the summer athletics competition programme the way that the local boys’ schools have done. They wanted a new challenge, they felt, and there their athletes will meet stronger competition and become eligible for provincial and international selection. Let’s watch that space.

3. The Schools Boat Race always makes for riveting TV viewing and there was drama on the first day when St Mary’s, going for their 10^th consecutive win in the girls quad, had a rower “catching a crab” in the heats, finishing third. That meant there was a new champion this year – St Andrew’s – and credit to them for working hard and improving every year, when they seemed to be doomed to be perpetual runners-up.  

4. Jeppe’s 22-19 rugby win over Grey College has been dubbed the upset of the century, and certainly no-one saw it coming. I was there for this one and it was a classic case of the favourites underestimating their opponents, who played out of their skins. Jeppe took their chances and when it began to emerge that they might lose, the Grey players tried too hard, became individualistic, made mistakes and lost their shape. It’s not something you're ever likely to see again.

5. Let’s get all the rugby highlights out of the way. In July Western Province beat Free State in the “main game” of the Craven Week at Monument. It was their 5^th consecutive unofficial champions title and it took their winning streak at the week to 15 games. The quality of the top rugby schools in the Western Cape (and most them should really be in the Boland) is such that it’s difficult to see them losing any time soon.

6. The captain of the SA Schools side announced at the end of the Craven Week was King Edward’s Esethu Mnebele. He is the second player from Joburg’s top English rugby school to get that honour in recent years, following Travis Gordon in 2017. His journey is quite remarkable. He attended KES on a TAG Foundation bursary, meaning his way was paid by sponsors found by Jonathan and Tracy Gerber, and he was looked after throughout his school years by the foundation. He came from a poor family background and was given opportunities that he clearly made the very best of. I’ve been critical of bursary programmes that claim they have the interests of the boy at heart when they are actually only interested in the player and how he can help them win rugby games. TAG isn’t one of those.

7. Hoërskool Garsfontein beat Waterkloof 36-30 in the final of the SDC Noordvaal Cup competition. It was a clash between close neighbours, indicating that the rugby strength is in the Eastern side of Pretoria. Garsfontein are leaders in running their rugby programme on professional lines. Like it or not, it produces results.

8. Turning to hockey. Western Province won the boys U18 interprovincial title for the fourth year in a row, beating Boland 3-2 in the final. The great coaching and fine facilities at the same Western Cape schools that make WP schools rugby so strong are responsible for the power of hockey in the province (although some of the classmates of the WP Craven Week players would have been playing for the opposition in the hockey final). Southern Gauteng took the girls title, beating North Gauteng in the final.

9. Another individual. Jeppe’s Mukona “Smiley” Manavhela broke the South African record in the Boys U16 200m in 20,82 seconds at the NWU Top 30 meet in Potchefstroom in November. He wasn't beaten all year and is clearly going places.

10. Central Gauteng Aquatics came out on top at the SA Schools Water Polo Championships in East London in December. They won five of the 10 sectional titles, including both the U19 girls and boys. They got five gold medals, one silver and three bronze, to break the grip that Western Province has had on this tournament in recent years.

Banning poached rugby players from provincial trials won't work, I'm afraid

So the Western Province High Schools Rugby Association, I see, has taken a resolution aimed at stopping what it calls the poaching of players at its affiliated schools.

In essence, a player that has been found to be poached, following a complaint from the school he was at, and an investigation, will not be invited to the province’s trials for its U16 Grant Khomo or U18 Craven Week teams.

It’s not a bad idea, but I doubt that it will have much effect. The selection and management of the teams that go to SA Rugby’s Youth Weeks is the only area in which the provincial schools unions hold any sway, really, so I guess that has to be what they are looking at. Whether what they are proposing will be enough of a disincentive to make schools change their recruitment policies and practices is, however, dubious.

The biggest flaw is believing that possible provincial selection is the main attraction. It’s part of it, sure, and schools with a track record of providing players to provincial teams certainly use that in their sales pitches. But it’s based on the quaint notion that offers made are in the interests of the players. They are not. Victories for the school’s 1^st rugby team is the goal and everything is in service of that.

You can’t, in any event, guarantee that every bursary player will become a provincial player, and to promise that is dishonest.

The proposals are based on another misconception. A Craven Week cap is not what it used to be. The ever-increasing racial quotas in those teams have meant that fewer and fewer white players can be chosen and that, rightly or wrongly, has had consequences. Some players at the top rugby schools have different targets now. Success for the school team at the big interschool festivals – Easter, Noord-Suid, Wildeklawer – on national TV - is as prestigious these days. And recruitment deals by the Universities and the senior unions, including overseas clubs, take place there now – the Craven Week is too late.

So, it’s quite possible that a talented white player (any colour of player, actually) can be persuaded to change schools even if that will close the Craven Week door for him.

The practice of poaching, for the school, is about buying future victories. At the same time, for the player and his parents it’s about money. School and hostel fees, kit and equipment, medical care, pocket money, and other things, are what are offered. Followed by a good chance at a Varsity Cup or junior provincial contract. And, of course, they say he will be getting a better all-round education than he was getting at the school he came from. I don’t think the threat of not being picked for the Grant Khomo Week necessarily trumps all of that.

Then, they have put in the loophole that they had to – movements of learners for reasons not related to poaching are OK. They cite two examples: a genuine case of changing schools because of relocation to a new town (or suburb), and movements that are academically in the best interests of the learner. Granting a bursary to a boy from an economically disadvantaged family that will give him access to an undeniable better education would also have to be acceptable – and that’s the justification very frequently used.

So, while it’s a start, and a move in the right direction, the sanctions proposed in Cape Town are a bit of a dead seagull, I’m afraid.

I spent derby day watching 12-year-old girls playing hockey

 

 

My sporting highlight of the weekend? ………… Well, not being at the KES vs Jeppe derby game for a change.

I see Jeppe won it by 12 points, after losing the 1^st leg by 10 back in April, which makes them narrow winners over the two games which sounds about right, given their respective seasons.

I decided I didn’t have the stomach to face the six hours of unrelenting struggle that is attending this particular fixture – they are basically jamming seven-odd thousand spectators into facilities designed for three of four thousand, and nothing good comes of that.

I was going to stay at home, but then I opened an invitation sent to me (I sometimes get invited to things by people who think I still work for a newspaper). It was to attend a primary schools girls hockey festival, marking the 145^th Anniversary of St Mary’s DSG in Pretoria.

Those 145 years caught my attention. They mean St Mary’s DSG was founded in 1879, that’s nine years before St Mary’s in Joburg - widely regarded as our oldest school - which I assumed was also the oldest school in Gauteng.

Those who know me won’t be surprised to hear that I had to find out what that was all about. OK, so I was going to Pretoria later on any way to watch the Test match on TV with friends, but I thought watching some 11 and 12-year-old girls playing hockey would be a nice change from the gladiatorial spectacle that is a KES vs Jeppe game.

So, I made the trip up the R21. I’m so glad I did. Apart from the fact that those children were playing on a field marked with white lines, and that they were busting a gut in the cause of their teams, the sporting action, and the day, could not have been more different, and it was glorious to see.

And I got to meet great people. Mrs Odelle Howard, the Executive Head of St Mary’s DSG addressed my curiosity about the school’s history and opened up the school building to show me some historic pictures and things – it has piqued my interest to dig deeper. Later, I met Melinda Vos, their Director of Sport. She’s got an educational take on sport in a school that they should bottle and send to some of the people that I’ve come across who are running sport in schools.

Meanwhile, the little girls were playing hockey. No scores were kept – they never even switched the electronic scoreboard on, and they were up for another game every 40 minutes or so, all three days long.

There were some over-excited parents, but that’s their job, I guess. Everyone was clearly having a great time.

I’m glad Jeppe won the derby game, but I’m not sorry that I wasn’t there to see it.

 

There's only one Province, Western Province - sometimes

 

Here’s an old hoary chestnut, and like most of the things I whinge and whine about in this space, it has to do with what some regard as acceptable once they have decided that victory is more important than principles in school sport.

It’s about the inclusion of three schools in Paarl, and one in Stellenbosch, in the Western Province union boundaries when it comes to rugby, while they are located in the Boland for every other activity.

It wasn’t me who started the conversation this time – I came across it in the chat following the announcement of the fixtures for the final day of the Craven Week in Krugersdorp. Initially, some expressed anger at the fact that Boland was not allocated a game on the A field on Saturday. A-field slots on the final day have traditionally been the only honour that the teams play for at the week, with the greatest accolade being the final game of the week. Boland won both their earlier games and played some beautiful running rugby (which is what it’s supposed to be about) but they were relegated to the B field, behind some teams that had lost, and some who played some pretty turgid rugby.

It didn’t take long for the thread to begin asking the usual questions.

I’ve confessed before that when looking at topics like these I go back to things I’d already written and I came across several pieces on this issue. For one of them, it seems, I did a bit of Google Mapping. Here’s what I found:

It’s 71km by road from Wynberg Boys’ High to Boland Landbou; 64km from there to Paarl; and 46km to Paul Roos Gimnasium in Stellenbosch.

I then looked at King Edward VII School, in central Johannesburg. From there it’s 54km to Affies in Pretoria; 34km to Monument. And 21km to Boksburg’s EG Jansen.

The point I was making was that the Lions province can cast a net considerably smaller than the one Western Province uses, and scoop up a number of top rugby schools to greatly improve its talent pool (Garsfontein would also be in it). The Craven Week team that could be selected from those schools collectively would also, very possibly, go five years and 15 games unbeaten at the Craven Week.

Not that it will ever happen, and neither should it. Instead, Western Province should start choosing from the schools within its region only, like they do for cricket, hockey, water polo, athletics etc.

I’ve never been able to find out how this situation came about. It’s always been that way, they say. There was one Craven Week - 2001 in Rustenburg - where it was decided that the Boland schools should play for Boland, and Western Province should be chosen from the Cape Town area, just like it is in every other sport. Derick Hougaard, who went to Boland Landbou, played for Boland that year and made the SA Schools side. So did Pieter Pienaar, who was at Paarl Gimnasium. Also in the team was Schalk Burger, and Hennie Daniller, who was in Grade 11 and played for Western Province the next year.

Western Province won all three games in Rustenburg, but they didn’t get into any of the late games on the A field on Saturday, and the next year the Paarl schools were back in the WP fold. I can’t find anyone who remembers why the decision was made to do the right thing in 2001, in fact, many were astounded to find out that it happened at all. But whatever principles were applied in deciding to go that way were abandoned when they realised that without a little help from their Boland friends, Western Province had to play on a level field, and they found it tough.

One interesting explanation that was given me is rooted in the 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 (translate that to the wealthy, white, landed class aligning itself with Cape Town rather than with the poorer, mainly so-called coloured, folk of lower Paarl). I haven't been able to find out if that was true.

The rationale for having Paul Roos Gimnasium in Cape Town for rugby is tied to the school’s close association with Stellenbosch University, which as one of the oldest clubs in the land, played in the Cape Town competitions from the earliest days.

This is actually not a good year to bring all of this up again. The composition of the Western Province and WP XV teams that went to the Craven Week was pretty balanced – of the 46 in all, 22 were from the four “Boland” schools. Rondebosch and Wynberg have had good years, and they contributed eight and six representatives, respectively

There were 17 players from the two WP sides in the two SA Schools squads announced and, of them, 10 came from those schools.

The role of school sport is educational. It’s about helping young people to become good adults. It’s also about developing players for higher levels of the game.

I would argue that that both those aims will still be well met if those Boland Schools are sent back to where they belong. Building a legacy and setting unbeaten records for Western Province should have nothing to do with it, but if they are going to brag, and if the media are going to extoll their virtues, the same rules must apply to all.

Craven Week number 31 for me

 

I said I wasn’t going to make the trek to Krugersdorp to watch the Craven Week this year, but I lied. It was the thought of sitting in the traffic for an hour each way that turned me off, but the FOMO got me in the end, and I drove out there on Tuesday.

I’m not sorry I did. I wanted to see for myself if what I, and others who, like me, have been around like me for while, suspected –  the Lions selectors have  stuffed it up again – and after watching them go down to the Bulls, I’m afraid it loooks like they have.

But mainly, I guess, I wanted to say that I was there in 2024. I didn’t go to the 1994 Craven Week in Newcastle, for some reason, but I was at the 2004 week in Nelspruit, and in Middelburg in 2014, and I was in Secunda in 1993 – so there’s three decades of attendance right there.

The first time I attended the week was actually in 1985, before I became a newspaper reporter. It was in Witbank, close enough for a hotheaded young coach to drive to, and there were a couple of my players from Highlands North Boys’ High in the, then, two Transvaal sides. So, the coach of one of the other English schools that had a representation and I, went there on all three days.

Then, in 1988, I was made the manager of the Transvaal XV that played in Port Elizabeth, and in 1989 I was the coach of the Transvaal A team that won the main game at Ellis Park – it was the Centenary of the Transvaal, now Lions, Union. The coaching appointments in those days were a bit of an emeritus position, rotated between members of the High Schools Committee.

It was in 1989 that I first got a job as a freelancer at The Star, and it was a reporter that I attended the 1990 week in Durban. I missed out in just three years after that, including 1994 in Newcastle, but I was at every other Craven Week until my last as a reporter in Paarl in 2018. Add in this year, and that makes 31 in all. I don’t know if that’s a proud or a pathetic record, but I’m pretty sure it’s unique, certainly there is no-one still going to the events who has been around as long as I have.

So, you can see why I decided to go to Monument on Tuesday after all. The Craven Week is, of course no longer anything like it  was through most of those years. When it was started by Piet Malan in 1964, endorsed by Dr Craven, it was a celebration of schoolboy rugby. Craven absolutely insisted the emphasis was on playing open, attractive rugby and that winning wasn’t the primary aim.

The “main” game was awarded to the two teams that played the “best” rugby. It wasn’t a “final” and I remember Dr Craven chewing out the SAPA reporter in the press box one year because the Citizen used that word in the headline to his article.

The advent of full TV coverage, of sponsors who call the tune and the “professionalisation” of the game changed all of that. It’s become a knockout tournament for the most successful unions now. Round one is quarterfinals, the four winners meet in round two and the last two standing play in the final on Saturday. And it’s officially called a final in the SA Rugby correspondence, and the winners are referred to as the champions.

All the fixtures for the final day used to be allocated on that basis of the best rugby played. Nowadays, it seems, they have become classification games ala knockout tournaments, and Boland, for example, who played great rugby by all accounts and won both their earlier games are relegated to the B field, simply because from the get-go they were never given an opportunity to play one of the big guns. Dr Craven would never have allowed it.

The best players from the schools in the Boland region are, of course, playing for Western Province, who have two teams at the Craven Week, and third at the U18 Academy Week – but that’s a different balls-up that no-one has the balls to address, I’m afraid

Back to those Lions selections. It’s a rugby truism that if your second team is highly competitive with your first (even to the point of besting them in training games) then you don’t have a very good second team, you’ve got a big selection problem!

That’s happened with the Lions for two years in a row. The Academy Week team is cleaning up in its competition again this year - they (pictured above) won the main game 45-25 against EP today - while the Craven Week team (with some exceptions obviously) again looks quite ordinary.

There are players in the B team who should have been in the A team. Simple as that!

 

I love the Craven week, but not the cold

 

I Googled it, the phrase “in the bleak midwinter” comes from a poem by Christina Rossetti, later set to music by Gustave Holst, and sung as a Christman Carol.

 The opening verse paints as good a word picture as any you’ll find: It’s enough to make you want to spend the day in bed, but then you remember that Midwinter’s Day – June 21 – is on Friday, and they are prediciting weather much like today (June 19): a bit nippy to start with, but with a short-sleeves 22 degree peak at 2pm.

Here's how it goes:

'In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.’ 

And three days later, on June 24, the Craven Week begins. I attended more Craven Weeks than most people – a colleague in the media once declared that I was at more them than anyone alive, although I’m quite sure that isn’t true – and while I miss those days awfully, I’m not that sad that I won’t be cold when I watch the games on my TV this year.

I remember the words of two of the great characters around the week in my early days, both long departed. Piet Kranouw reminded us as we were planning to travel one year that “two things are true – there’s no such thing as weak SE Transvaal (now Pumas) team, and that you never go to the Craven Week without a coat.” Then I remember the inimitable Zandberg Jansen speak of Bloemfontein’s “eiesoortige vrek koud” (unique deathly cold).

There are hordes of boys and girls and parents and officials in the City of Roses over the next two weeks for the SA Schools hockey IPTs, and I thought of them this morning when I turned on another panel on the gas heater.

The U18 Craven Week is at Monument this year, where it will probably be quite balmy, and I know the hospitality in Krugersdorp will be the customary country-town Craven Week warm, but I don’t know if I’ll be going there – the prospect of two hours in the traffic each day on Ontdekkers Road or Hendrick Potgieter (take your pick) is as bleak as that winter’s day that Rossetti so brilliantly describes.

Still, the Craven Week is one of the very best in the year, I will miss it.

Maybe uncover some new cases of abuse instead of rehashing the old ones?

I’ve watched the first two episodes of the School Ties series on M-Net and find myself wondering what the point of it is.

Child abuse, sexual and other, is entirely reprehensible and it must be rooted out by whatever means. The power that coaches and teachers have over the children in their care can be abused, and that is happening in schools, and sports clubs.

There have been enough cases in the media to show that this has happened in some of the so-called elite schools in this country and, clearly, schools have a duty to ensure that these things should never happen in their communities.

That’s non-debatable. But why, I wonder, is M-Net regurgitating cases from the not so recent past? Apart from anything else, it’s lazy journalism. The two episodes so far deal with the David McKenzie affair at St Andrew’s College and Collan Rex’s conviction of hundreds of cases at Parktown Boys’ High. Both of those were covered in the My Only Story podcast three years ago, and in the press. They were repeated in an edition of Carte Blanche earlier this year. Samantha Cowan wrote a book (her School Ties title has been appropriated for this series) and she features on camera in the Parktown episode, repeating her conclusions.

Episode two ended with a teaser indicating that the next story will be that of the tragic events at St John’s Prep School and College, which were also aired in that Carte Balance edition.

There’s no harm in retelling these stories and in analysing their significance, again and again - if they act as a cautionary tale and constantly sharpen awareness among children and their parents. I think it might have been more valuable, however, if the makers of this series had rather gone looking for other incidents (and the experts quoted intimate that these things are quite common in our schools).

The real problem, I feel, is that the schools involved are not being helped by the re-opening of these cases. There doesn’t seem to be much confidence in their ability to proceed down a different path, committed to being the sorts of places where these things cannot happen again. 

The statements by the schools are displayed, without comment, but I get the feeling that they are being perceived as empty promises. Whether those cases were rogue outliers or part of an established toxic system, as alleged by some of the experts, the schools now have a duty to carry on educating their learners in many complex ways. That’s difficult enough without being made to account again for matters closed some time ago, and without being left alone to carry on with the process of rebuilding and continuing to safeguard those in their care.

I also have a particular problem with something that was said at the end of the 1st episode. Deon Wiggett, the My Only Story man, fires a broadside at the sport of water polo and, in it, he repeats the statement he made in the last of those podcasts that Mark Evans, a teacher and polo coach at DSG in Grahamstown, had been accused of inappropriate behaviour by some of the girls he coached.

Evans was suspended by the school, pending a Disciplinary Enquiry. In January 2022 I got hold of a letter sent to the DSG community by the headmaster in which he details the process followed in the enquiry (a legally sound and exhaustive one) and announces that Evans was found not guilty of all the charges.

He quotes the findings of Advocate Ryno Eksteen, the independent chairman of the DE:

He was satisfied that the evidence presented did not support the conclusion that the teacher concerned had acted inappropriately or had failed to conform to DSG’s standards of conduct and the SACE Code of Conduct in his interaction with learners.

He specifically found no evidence of the teacher making undue physical contact with learners or intruding on their dignity in any manner (whether while coaching water polo or in the classroom).

In a letter to its parents, written after the airing of the School Ties programme, the school explains that while the investigation initiated by DSG was being conducted and the disciplinary enquiry concluded, the South African Council for Educators (SACE) was conducting its own investigation, which was concluded in March 2022. On 25 May 2022, DSG received the findings of the SACE Ethics Committee in a formal communication, which informed the school that an investigation into the allegations had been conducted, and the Council could not find sufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations. On 31 March 2022, the Ethics Committee deliberated on the matter and recommended that the file be closed pending new/tangible information. 

As a result of those findings Evans was reinstated as a teacher. Is repeating the allegations, despite the exoneration, permissible? Surely it can’t be left there?

I assume M-Net is getting the viewership numbers it is hoping for with this production. I wonder where they will be going to after St John’s. Will they then do their jobs as investigative journalists and uncover a new case? And will they leave the schools already affected alone to carry out the duty of care that we all demand of them?