The Jeppe U14 festivals were absolutely worth the time and money

My sporting highlight of the weekend? ….. Well, the Lions thumping the Stormers, obviously, and St David’s showing they belong among the water polo top guns, producing that final against Bishops at the KES tournament.

But it’s got to be the two U14 festivals at Jeppe. They haven’t been tournaments for a number of years now and that’s how it should be. Two schools pulled out of it this year (a third did so last year) because, apparently, they think it is a waste of time and money if 13 year-olds aren’t playing for league points and a trophy – imagine that!

The festivals were great events without them. The disappointment I saw on faces when games were called off because of lightning and rain, showed that while the results don’t count, the boys want to play, and they play to win.

You can see the schools take their responsibility to teach the little ones properly by the quality of the coaches they send. The legendary Coach Vipes - Roland Andongndou, possibly the most experienced (and one of the more successful) school basketball coach around, was in the St Stithians corner at the basketball. The equally experienced Alex Christians is with the Jeppe team; and I spotted St John’s 1st team coach, Clemen Kock, watching his school’s babies with keen interest.

Down at the pool, there was one current national player, Luka Rajak, coaching the St John’s team and another – David Marshall - refereeing many of the games. The number one referee in the country, Lucky Letshabo, also officiated in some of the matches.

Steven La Marque a former director of coaching of SA Water Polo was there, coaching the Maritzburg College team; and Jason Sileno who has coached SA national sides at various levels, was there with St Stithians.

The water polo teams played nine games over their four days, the basketball teams slightly less. And in the absence of having to win at any cost, all the players in the squads got time on the court or in the pool. I was watching out for that particularly, and I can confirm that it happened.

If that’s not worth the money and effort, I’m not sure what is. 

School sport commercialism. Hell no!

 

I really don’t know where to begin with throwing in my two cents worth about the recent School Sport Commercialisation Conference. The idea that a sports programme in a school should be seen as generator of revenue is just so wrong to me that anything that might have been said at the conference, no matter how internally logical it may sound, and no matter how good it sounds in the narrow context of what was discussed, is the fruit of a poisoned tree, and I reject it all, without having heard a word of it.

I realise that makes me sound like a puritanical lunatic, but I think this so important that I’ll have to live with that.

I’ve been calling for a complete reset of school sport for some time (and we all know that we are really talking about school rugby here). The genie is out of the bottle, and we are never going to fix things incrementally. I find myself thinking, from time to time, that surely this is as bad as it can get. Recent examples are the ranking of sports schools in the country, which was just loony; the report on player movements between schools; and just last week, a list of school players to watch this season, like they do at the start of World Cup tournaments.

But this one takes the cake. Anyone who tells you it’s the role of schools to run sports programmes that make them attractive to sponsors and ultimately earn money for the school, should be run out of town and never allowed to return.

I get it that the popularity of schools rugby, in particular, is already generating money, and very little of it is going to the schools playing the games. I also know that rugby programmes, in this near professional era, are very expensive to run, and if they want to maintain and grow them, the schools need sponsorships.

But understanding is not approval. This latest development feels like a capitulation to those forces, without asking why they are there and if they belong in school sport.

They obviously don’t. And the real reason why is because the entire edifice is built on the children that play in the games. Are they being considered? Are we sucking more and more of the fun out of it all. To command the big bucks your teams have to perform. The demands placed on the children to make that happen are well documented, as are the dodgy practices that stem from that. The motivation behind it has been about things like school prestige, a magnet for recruitment, and a whole lot of ego for the adults involved. That boosting the commercial value of the school should be added to that list is so bad that, as I said, I just don’t know where to begin.

And it’s all terribly elitist, of course. The kind of commercialisation they are talking of is only for the haves. It’s been accepted that you can’t perform at that level without commercial input, so the top schools are the ones who have the means and they are the ones looking to boost their value. There are only a handful of them, and they were at that conference It’s not for the rest. It’s about the rich and greedy growing the pie and sharing it among themselves. The top of the pile gets higher and higher and the desert around them increases in size and aridity. Rugby is already dying everywhere outside of the schools in the top 20 ranking. This is accelerating the process.

I’m reminded of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The townsfolk were greedy, remember, and refused to pay the piper for his services. So, he led their children away. Gone forever. They were so concerned about money that they forgot all about the children. I hope we are not doing that too.

 

It's a new year - now's a good time to get rid of those rankings

 

There was an article on one of the rugby sites recently, reporting player movements ahead of next season. It wasn’t about the URC, or the Currie Cup. The author was speaking about the transfer of schoolboy players between schools. He was referring to 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old rugby players, using the same language that you read in discussions of English Premier League player movements during the transfer window.

The author claims to be privy to discussions that should really only be between parents and the schools their boys are at (and going to), and between the heads of the schools involved. That those conversations should be public in the public domain tells me we are in far worse trouble than I feared.

And we are in trouble. The educational principles that lie at the foundation of everything that happens at, or in the name of a school – and that includes sport – are increasingly being compromised, or even abandoned, in the cause of winning.

And rugby, like it or not, is the most prominent and popular of all the games played at schools in this country, and winning rugby games has taken on an importance that seems to override logic and common decency. Winning becomes the dominant value and, because people are prepared to do what it takes to uphold their values, that means winning at all costs.

That’s what has led to the situation described in that article. Scouting and recruitment of talented players, wherever they are, has become an industry and the transactions implied don’t come cheap.

But that’s not all. All manner of other practices are becoming more and more prevalent at school level. Early specialisation is one of them. You’ll battle to find a reputable child psychologist or sports physiologist who will tell you that teenagers should be putting all their time and energy into one activity, all year-round. Yet, schools start their preparations for next year’s winter at the start of the previous year’s summer, demanding (and often getting) 1^st choice when it comes to the time of the boys, and the use of the school’s fields and facilities.

Because rugby success has become a measure of the worth of a school (as crazy as that notion is), it didn’t take long for the school sport sites to come up with a way of measuring schools against each other – seeing that there are no leagues – by publishing regularly updated ranking lists.

Now, they are obviously farcical: you cannot compare apples and oranges, no matter how much you might come up with formulas, explanations and algorithms. But parents and old boys – not groupings that are renowned for their ethical attitudes to winning and losing – love them and keenly follow their updates.

The headmasters of schools, almost to man, don’t approve. They actually shouldn’t approve of anything I’ve described above, and they all signed a document saying they don’t, years ago.

Yet the rankings persist and multiply, and they generate the clicks. Taking them out of the equation would be a good place to start in getting the entire sport back on an educational track. And doing so is possible. Schools should simply stop sending in their results to those sites and order the compilers of ranking lists to leave them out. Legal action should be threatened, if necessary, it’s that important.

The Schools Sport Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2017 by the heads of State and Independent Schools doesn’t mention rankings specifically – they weren’t much of a thing back then - but the principles agreed to in it certainly don’t allow for a ranking system. In my opinion there is no reason why the heads of schools shouldn’t simply refuse to be part of one.

Just about all of the top sport schools are part of the agreement. Without them in it, the ranking system will wither and die.

It’s a good place to start, and as we head into a new year, now’s a good time.

My Top 10 for 2025

 

Here's my annual thumb-suck exercise. These are the 10 school sport related things that stood out for me in 2025. It's subjective, based on events I attended - or watched on SuperSports Schools. 

Of course there are others worthy of making the list. I stopped at, 10 though.

1 Let’s get the regulars out of the way first. St Benedict’s won the boys teams competition at the SA Schools Rowing Championships for the 31st consecutive year, and the schools boat race for the 8th year in a row. Just who is going to topple them from their throne remains a mystery.

2 Western Province beat SWD in the “main game” at the Craven. It was their 6^th consecutive unofficial champions title and it took their winning streak at the week to 18 games. The quality of the top rugby schools in the Western Cape (and some them should really be in the Boland) is such that it’s difficult to see them losing any time soon.

3 The Golden Lions XV beat Western Province in the final of the Academy Week. I know WP has two sides in the Craven Week, so they beat the Province C team, but it was third main game win a row, which is quite an achievement. The Lions Craven Week side has performed poorly in all of those three years. Some might say the Lions have a selection problem, I couldn’t possibly comment, of course.

4 The comeback of the King Edward rugby team after a disastrous start to the season was something to observe. The Reds scraped a narrow win over St John’s to start and then blew a 23-6 lead to lose to Jeppe. They then went to Noord-Suid where they lost 102-0 to Paarl Gim, and went down to SACS. Back home, there was another defeat – to Pretoria Boys High - before they turned a corner at their Easter Festival where they beat Rondebosch and looked likely to beat Northwood when the game was called off due to lightning. They were to cause major upsets later on, beating Noordheuwel and Helpmekaar, and they beat Pretoria in the return fixture. There were to be more losses, but they were in very competitive games against good sides. It was a great example of fighting back when people had written you off.

5 The SACS 1^st hockey team was unbeaten, again. They finished the year as the number one ranked team. Rankings are bollocks, I believe, and this case proves that. When SACS were put into 1^st place after one game back from an overseas tour, they were always going to stay there. Their only competition, really, was Jeppe, who they don’t play. Who is to say that Jeppe wouldn’t have beaten or drawn with them?

6 The Affies 1^st rugby team lost to Paarl Boys High and Grey College and drew with Paarl Gim, which, according to the compilers, ranked them third in the land. There’s no question, though that they are the best rugby school in the country by every other measure. They can field the most teams on match day – 30 or more – and they almost never lose a game. I watched them play Jeppe and while their 1^st team had to dig deep to beat a determined Jeppe side, all their other teams won comfortably, including some of their lower open teams playing the 1^st teams of smaller schools.

7 Jeppe hockey teams won all three Southern Gauteng knockout cups, the U19 Aitken, U16 Alan Monk and U15 Boden Trophy. The Aitken Cup win was Jeppe’s their 21^st, the most by any school. The 1^st team was unbeaten in the season – they played 31 games, won 29 and drew two.

8 Two outstanding individual performances. Jason Rowles of St David’s was named the CSA U19 Men's Player of the Year, even though he is still in Grade 11. He made the SA Schools team in 2024 and was Batsman of the Week at the Cubs Week in January. He was co-captain of the SA U19 team during the year. He captained his school to the national playoffs of the inaugural SA Schools T20 competition this year and was named the Central Gauteng Lions U18 Player of the Year.

9 Keegan Cockburn took five wickets off five balls against KES in the 19^th over of the Central Gauteng final of the SA20 competition in November. He finished with figures of 5/7 off four overs, but KES won the game by one wicket, getting the winning runs off the final ball.

10 Central Gauteng won the main games – the U19 girls and boys finals – at the Schools Water Polo SA inter provincial tournament at St David’s in December. Western Province took the overall title, based on medals won in all five age group divisions. Central Gauteng did a great job of organising the event, which involved over 2 000 players and several hundred officials. There were 430 matches played over four days and, despite lighting disruptions and venue changes (sometimes mid-game) on every day, the prize-giving at the end of it was just half an hour late.

11 I said I will limit it to 10. Of course I’ve got an 11^th, simply because we aren’t likely to see anything like this again any time soon. In January there were four St Stithians old boys – Kagiso Rabada, Wiaan Mulder, Ryan Rickelton and Kwena Mapakha – in the same Proteas team in a Test against Pakistan. And now that 19 year-old Lhuan-dre Pretorius is establishing himself in the national teams in all three formats, it’s quite possible that we might have five Saints old boys in one team soon.

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.