The 50th SWPSA IPT is going to be huge - it wasn't always that way

 The 50^th South African Schools Water Polo tournament takes place next week. It will be played at eight school pools around Johannesburg. And it will be massive - there are 10 sections, involving over 2000 players and several hundred officials.

That’s very different to what it must have been like in 1975 when the 1^st tournament was held at Ellis Park. I wasn’t involved back then – my first SA Schools was in 1981, in Bloemfontein - but the provinces and people involved hadn’t changed much by then.

It was an U19 boys tournament at first and the competing provinces were: Transvaal, Northern Transvaal, Eastern Transvaal, Natal, Western Province, Eastern Province, Border and Free State. Natal won it just about every year.

I was sent to the 1981 tournament as manager of the Transvaal B team by Buddy Herd – the headmaster of Athlone Boys’ High, who basically ran things among the Joburg schools back then.

At that tournament I met the men who ran the game. Some of them moved on soon afterwards (Buddy Herd retired the next year) and others went on to make deep inroads in the game at school level.

Dredging my memory, I recall the following pioneers of the SA Schools tournament. Almost all of them have passed on now, leaving me as a rather patchy recorder of those early days.

The chairman of what was called the South African Schools Water Polo Association was Johan Terblanche. He was also the chairman of SA Schools swimming. The ties between swimming and polo were strong back then, but the relationship was not a happy one – not much has changed in that regard in the last 50 years.

His sidekick was Nico Lamprecht of DHS and Natal. He was a water polo man and actually ran things. His involvement was to continue for many years and it’s fair to say that he became a legend. He is still alive although I’m told he is struggling with poor health.

There were a number of other, compared to me, older men in charge. They were all prominent water polo men in their cities. Ken Kuiper from Northern Transvaal wasn’t a teacher, but he was a coach and referee; Karel Elferink From Eastern Province was a leading figure in water polo down there; Chris Waller from Western Province was headmaster of Tableview High School and, I recall, an advocate of girls polo at a time when very few other even knew it was being played; Tess Uren kept the game going for many years at schools level in Eastern Transvaal, a water polo powerhouse that never had a strong interschool structure; the 1981 tournament was organised for Free State by Abrie Pepler and Russell Keet, both of whom moved to East London later, where Russell went on to head a sporting family dynasty; the Border men in Bloemfontein in 1981 were Mike Boy and Charl Wessels, both teachers who went on to serve the game for many more years.

I was thrown into running the association in Joburg when Buddy Herd suddenly retired for medical reasons, and I was involved for the next 16 years. Nico was a constant presence in that time, as was Alan Burt, who ran the refereeing side. Ian Melliar started refereeing soon afterwards and was to become another selfless, long-serving, presence around the game.

There is, of course a long list of men and women who have got this tournament to its 50^th year. The 2025 tournament is a very different beast to the 1975 one and the current organisers are brilliant. Those who started it off, and those that nudged it ahead along the way, shouldn’t be forgotten, however. Along with those mentioned above, here are few others who were involved in my time:

The Zimbabweans, some of whom later moved South and carried on their work here: Fred Wilson, Piet van Tonder, Peter Phillips.

Alan Footman was the Western Province coach in the early days, he was a constant presence, and one of the great characters of the game.

Brian Daley coached the Eastern Transvaal team for years, and put his son Simon into the team as a 13 year-old, and watched him grow into one of South Africa’s greats.

Dave Pitcairn, who started off in Joburg with me and then moved to Cape Town where he was instrumental in waking the sleeping giant that is Western Province schools water polo. His work was carried on by the Schoolings, Doug and Norma, who took the province to another level.

Steven la Marque was a player at that 1981 tournament in Bloemfontein. He went on to throw himself into coaching and was to become possibly the most prominent administrator of the game in the recent past.

I’ll be remembering them next to the pools in Joburg next week. Their legacies and spirits will be looming large.

St John's (and Gauteng) polo are tops again

 

My sporting highlight of the week ….

St John’s and St David’s contesting the final at the SACS water polo tournament (with SACS and Rondebosch playing off for 3^rd place) and producing a thriller, won in the final second of extra time by St John’s.

Water polo has been big in my life. I was part of the small group that revived the Edwardian Cup (still played for at the KES tournament) in 1982. SACS was one of the out-of-town schools invited to the first one – mainly because Alan Footman and Andre Britz were mates – the polo toppies out there will know who they are – and it was in the old bar at Old Eds one night that Footy came up with the idea of replicating the concept at SACS.

The first SACS Festival was held in 1984 and for quite a few years following, KES and SACS were the only national inter-school water polo tournaments.

End of the history lesson. On Monday St John’s won the 40^th edition, and I’m happy about that, and even happier that their opponents in the final were St David’s. It was St John’s 6^th title equalling the number of wins by the hosts, with DHS and Rondebosch winning five each. It was St David’s first time in the final.

Monday’s outcome, following up on Central Gauteng Aquatics ending on top at the SA Schools Water Polo Championships in East London at the end of last year – they won five of the 10 age groups, including the U19 boys and girls - shows that the school water polo power hasn’t shifted to the Western Cape on a permanent basis, as many of us up here were fearing.

It also showed that the financial muscle of some schools in KZN that has put a stranglehold on the brightest young coaches around, is not producing invincibility (not yet anyway).

Bishops won the KES tournament earlier this year, and Hilton beat St John’s in the final at Clifton last week. You can argue that those are “proper” tournaments, with full length games in bigger pools than the one at SACS. There are very good teams out there I know, but for today, St John’s, and Gauteng, are on top of the hill.

And that is certainly a highlight!

No rest for the wicked - or for the teachers at the serious sporting schools

 

They say there’s no rest for the wicked. That may be true, but in my experience, there are some very good men and women who happily give up their precious periods of rest, year after year, for the benefit of other people’s children.

I’m talking about the teachers at the best of our schools, of course, and although they may or may not receive some sort of travel and sustenance allowance for the days that they are away from home; and their efforts are borne in mind, I hope, when annual bonuses are allocated, they do it for no financial reward.

I spend some time at two of Joburg’s boys schools these days and their upcoming short October holiday period - which was, I guess, originally intended to give everyone a breather ahead of the push towards the final exams – is jammed with tours and tournaments in all of the summer sports codes that have only just began their 2025/6 seasons.

Two of the big 1^st team ones. The Michaelmas Cricket Festival at Maritzburg College, and the SACS Waterpolo Tournament, have been going for many years. Now they have been joined by competitions in the other age groups and, of course, by the Basketball tournaments and festivals that have been started up in response to the phenomenal growth of that game at schools.

While the opportunities created for so many children to do what they love and to learn the lessons that going on tours teach (along with the sacrifices made by those teachers and coaches) are a positive thing, there is also another side to it all.

It’s all calendar-driven. There’s room for just two rounds of interschool sports fixtures in the fourth term, before exams begin, and there is so much rugby and hockey on the cards the next year that the 1^st term dates available for the summer sports have been curtailed over the years.

So, it’s beginning to look like the summer codes are being organised according to tournaments and festivals, rather than featuring a game a week against traditional local rivals, like we used to have back when I was involved. Hockey and rugby are also going that way, it seems.

Since then, a number of the schools that were involved in weekly fixtures against the schools where I work have dropped out. They are no longer competitive and no longer field enough teams to make it worthwhile for the bigger schools.

That’s a tragedy, and there are many reasons why that has happened, one of the main ones being that they find themselves on the other side of the professionalisation of school sport coin. Their talent has been stripped through recruitment and, admittedly, they no longer put in the effort that they used to (for their own reasons).

So, at schools where mass participation is a value that is striven for – alongside elite high performance – you have to go the festival route to get enough games for your teams.

That’s why, over the next two weeks, the schools I mentioned, along with the others of their ilk across the land, will be in action in the Midlands, in Gqeberha, at Grey College, in Pretoria, and Paarl and Durban.

I’ll be keeping an eye on as much of it as I can, thanks to the magic of SuperSport Schools. And thanking the Lord for that horde of teachers who have forgone their well-deserved rest to make it all happen.

Lessons aplenty as cricket season gets going

 

The school cricket season’s here. Well, almost, there is still a football season to get through, but, for me, the Fasken Time Cricket Festival at St David’s Marist Inanda marks the changing of the season for the serious cricketing people and I was once again fortunate to have a seat inside the organisation, tasked with taking some pictures and putting together a little newsletter each day.

It’s quite an undertaking, made tougher by the fact that, as a far as mother nature is concerned, those massive lawns at St David’s, and at the other schools who hosted games, are just not ready for this particular type of ball game yet. You can tell they aren’t because they have the distinctive lines, semi-circles and rings that tell you football is taking place, clear for all to see.

That didn’t deter from some proper cricket being played though. The Fasken is special because it’s a festival of two-day games. There’s no rush to bowl the limited number of overs allocated, nor is there the imperative to smash runs off every ball. That kind of cricket comes later on in the season, and it’s hugely entertaining – I watch it whenever I can.

No, the relative leisurely pace of these games allows for the more classic skills and behaviours of the game to be applied, and it’s there that the lessons are learnt that make cricket such a good game to include in the bouquet of processes that schools utilise in the raising of young people who will be good adults one day.

Cricket is unique in some ways and it’s in those idiosyncrasies, often, that the life lessons lie.

For example, at the end of each day we, the recorders of facts and snappers of pictures, had to wait a while before the purple cap handovers could happen (more about them just now), while both sets of players disappeared into the distance to fetch the rain covers and lay them on the wickets. That’s a lesson cricketers are taught – when your game’s over you cover the pitch so that someone else can be sure of playing on it tomorrow

And those purple caps. At the Fasken the teams are asked to watch their opponents appreciatively and award a cap to who they believed was their best player on the day – you don’t see that in too many other games.

Walk from field to field, like I did, and you’ll see the players who aren’t on the field sitting together under a tree, or a gazebo. They stay put all day, trash-talking most of the time, but the coaches are amongst them, sightly off to one side, taking advantage of the teaching moments that always arise. Show me another sports event where fit, energetic teenagers show that sort of discipline.

I looked out for, and saw the customary special moments that you only see on a cricket field - a team disappear down the hillside to look for a lost ball; rounds of applause for special opponents’ performances – 50s and 100s scored, unplayable balls bowled; a wicketkeeper taking off his gloves to tie a batsman’s loose shoelace; and a fielder stretching out the leg of a cramping batsman.

Like I said – raising young people who will be good adults one day.

The Fasken’s done – roll on the cricket season.

It's Fasken time!

 

Next week this time we’ll be into day one of the first two-day matches at the Fasken St David’s Time Cricket Festival.

Interesting name. Time cricket is a cricket thing, I’ll get into that just now, but it’s also Fasken time. When Dave Nosworthy, director of cricket at St David’s decided to change what was the a pretty successful T20 tournament at this time of the year into a time cricket event – for reasons we’ll also get to later – he probably never dreamed that the players and coaches at schools that play in it would in time get to rub their hands, once the rugby final whistle was  blown, and the last hooter sounded at the hockey turf, and say it’s Fasken time!

There’s the excitement of getting out there after a long winter of indoor nets, but there’s also the exclusivity and prestige involved. Serious sporting schools know what “the Fasken” means. No explanation is needed, just like with Nomads, Noord-Suid, SACS tournament, Michaelmas.

It’s Fasken time – let’s get going.

But it’s also Fasken Time Cricket. Time cricket is a bit of misnomer because time doesn’t really count, outside of the overall number days allocated – five in a Test, four in a first class game, two at the Fasken. And there is no limited number of overs that a side can bowl. You have to bowl the opposition out, or their captain can declare, setting you a target.

There are all sorts of good reasons for exposing schoolboy cricketers to declaration cricket, and to get them playing longer forms of the game, says Nosworthy. “The batsmen,” he says, “need to learn to spend more time at the crease, without the limited-overs restraints. The bowlers need to be able to bowl longer spells and be brought back later on. The players need to get a feel for proper cricket, with matches that go on, day after day.”

In limited-overs cricket there’s no room for innovation, and no requirement to apply cricket thinking to unfolding situations on the field, Nosworthy believes. “Captains must learn that sometimes you have to be prepared to lose in order to win. They need to be patient, to be brave and to set targets that give them a chance of winning. Those lessons that can’t be taught in limited-overs cricket. And exposure to time cricket is important to let young players experience what it’s like to bat all day or being on your feet two whole days,” he said.

The 12 captains and 150 odd players that will be at St David’s next week are entering the unknown. It’s going to be a great learning experience for them, and a lot of fun.

It’s Fasken (Time cricket) time!

The fixtures are:

Game 1 (28 and 29 August) - Waterkloof vs St David’s (La Valla Oval), Clifton vs Noordheuwel (Gier Oval), St Andrews vs Jeppe (La Rosey), St Charles vs KES (Temba Bavuma Oval), Nelspruit vs St Johns (Mitchell Oval), Lions XI vs St Stithians (Dlamini Oval).

Game 2 (30 and 31 August) - St David’s vs Lions XI (La Valla Oval), St Johns vs St Charles (Mitchell Oval), St Stithians vs St Andrew’s (Dlamini Oval), Jeppe vs Waterkloof (Gier Oval), KES vs Clifton (Temba Bavuma Oval), Noordheuwel vs Nelspruit (La Rosey).

 

 

An old and storied rivalry

 

I learnt in my days as a journalist not to deal in absolutes, especially when it comes to reporting on school sport. The early histories of schools are generally shrouded in the mists of time, they don’t always make logical sense and statistics are often a bit subjective - schools can have their own versions of events sometimes.

So, I’ve found, if you use terms like the oldest, the first, the biggest, the best etc, you will inevitably get someone telling you that you got it wrong.

In light of that, when I was told that the 1^st team rugby match between Jeppe and KES on August 2^nd – the second leg of their annual double-header derby fixture - is the 100th meeting between the two, my first question was, is it really?

So, I did a bit of research and, importantly, I spoke to the statisticians at KES and it is true that this game will be the 100^th meeting. The schools have been playing for 90 years, but in some years, including the last six in a row, they met twice in the same year.

KES are Jeppe’s oldest rivals, along with Parktown and Pretoria Boys’ High. The two schools met for the first time in 1935 and since then there have been 99 encounters. KES has won 63, Jeppe 30 and there have been six draws.

During the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, KES pretty much dominated the first rugby team results. Jeppe have clawed their way back in recent times. Jeppe won seven and lost four times in the years between 2010 and 2019.

It’s been honours even – five victories each – in the last 10 encounters.

Last 10 results

2018  Jeppe 40 KES 25
2019  KES 49 Jeppe 31
2019  Jeppe 25 KES 7
2022  KES 27 Jeppe 26
2022  KES 19 Jeppe 16
2023  KES 23 Jeppe 20
2023  Jeppe 41 KES 31
2024  KES 38 Jeppe 28
2024 Jeppe 25 KES 13
2025 Jeppe 37 KES 28

And it’s a proper derby game. It’s become common, in these days of festivals and tournaments, to call the traditional, one-on-one fixtures between schools, derbies. They are not.

A real derby is between neighbours and it’s a clash that goes beyond a routine traditional fixture.

It’s in the origin of the term. The original derby game was on Merseyside: Liverpool vs Everton. Look at Google Maps and you’ll see that Anfield and Goodison Park are less than 1km apart and separated by Stanley Park. The two grounds are actually both located on what used to be the Stanley Estate which was the property of the Earl of Derby. That’s why when they play each other it’s called the Derby game.

It’s not just about distance, though. I’ve never been to a Merseyside derby, but I’ve watched a couple of them on TV, and I’ve spoken to people who have been there – it’s definitely not just another Premier League fixture.

The biggest proper school derby in South Africa – in the world, the people down there claim – is the Paarl Gim vs Paarl Boys’ High game. I have been to that one. There is simply nothing like it. The town is split in half and the buildup to the game runs for weeks beforehand. Things have changed over the years and schools no longer draw pupils from their immediate surroundings, but the Paarl schools, in the past, were referred to as “onder-dorp” and “bo-dorp”: upper and lower town, the wine farmers vs the townsfolk. There’s a social and economic conflict there that adds spice to the encounter.

KES and Jeppe are just 5km apart by road, so they are also close neighbours, and The KES vs Jeppe game is similar to the Paarl game in terms of the contrast between the historical and socio-economic status of the communities involved. It’s Houghton vs Jeppestown, Northern vs Southern Joburg. The fact that the boys now come from all over town, and many of the rugby players from all over the country, notwithstanding, that difference in origins is something the old boys like to shout about – in a nice way – and it makes for a great occasion.

When the two teams met earlier this year, over 50% of the starting lineups were black, which speaks volumes about transformation and inclusivity at the two schools.

A few years ago one of the school sport websites ran a poll asking its readers to name what they saw as the biggest schoolboy rugby derbies in the country. Not surprisingly, the Paarl derby came out tops. Second was K-Day, the Grahamstown clash between St Andrew’s College and Kingswood, Jeppe vs King Edward was third.

Paarl Gim and Paarl Boys’ High first played each other in 1915, but the oldest derby rivalry on record is SACS vs Bishops (1873); Graeme College vs St Andrew’s is next oldest (1886), followed by Dale vs Queens (1891).

The Jeppe-KES game is a bit younger, but it qualifies as an old and storied rivalry.

There won’t be room for a mouse at game number 100, it’s going to be a ripper!

 

The TAG Foundation difference

 

My Sporting highlight of the weekend?

Well, two passes in the Test matches on Saturday – Russell to Sione Tuipulotu and Williams to Edwill Van der Merwe – were gorgeous, confirming for me that rugby has, at the least, equal rights with soccer to call itself the “beautiful game.”

But it has to be the Junior Springboks winning the U20 World Championship for the first time in 13 years.

Watching the Vusi Moyo masterclass in the final and reflecting on the fact that he and the hooker, Esethu Mnebelele, are both old boys of King Edward VII School, reminded me of the role that KES has played in rugby transformation in recent years.

Moyo and Mnebelele played for the SA Schools and U18 teams last year (Mnebele also did in 2023). When Golden Lions captain, Chinedu Amadi, made the SA Schools team at the end of the Craven Week this year he became the 16^th KES player to do so, beginning with Lee Barnard in 1974 – the 1^st time a national schools side was selected.

Amadi is at KES on a TAG Foundation bursary, as were Moyo and Mnebele. Thabang Mphafi, who made the SA Schools team in 2022, was also a TAG boy, as was Thando Biyella in 2023 (he was in Italy with the Junior Boks too this year). That means five of the last six KES boys to make the SA School team were on TAG Foundation bursaries.

Here’s where I get a little hypocritical around the edges. I’ve come out hard against the practice of schools recruiting rugby players on bursaries to strengthen their teams and claiming they are being altruistic.

I have, however, declared that there are exceptions. The TAG Foundation is one of those. Sure, they look for talented rugby players to assist, but no player is approached unless there are also compelling financial reasons. I spoke to the headmaster, and to someone at KES who has been very involved in the programme last week (ironically while we were watching a festival of teams who play the other beautiful game), and they described the family circumstances of all those boys. None of them could afford to go to the school on their own dime.

Not all the TAG beneficiaries are rugby players of course, and great care (along with donor-funding) makes sure they all fit in at the school and leave it after five years as the sort of men we have come to expect KES boys to be.

If it weren’t for TAG, none of those SA Schools players would have attended KES and we wouldn’t have seen Moyo and Mnebele in action in that final on Saturday.

All five of them were at KES since Grade 8, which means they were spotted as potential stars, who stood out despite their challenging circumstances, when they were 12 or 13 years old. That’s remarkable, and a huge feather in the cap of those who did the talent identification.

The majority of primary school rugby stars never make it to top high school levels, however, so the KES rugby programme had to help them over the next five years to reach their potential.

And TAG looked after them every step of the way – financially, pastorally and in their academic careers.

How’s all of that for a highlight?