It's really not about the 1st team

Following last Saturday’s excellent win for Monument over Garsfontein the Twittersphere was abuzz for a while on Sunday with people wondering if any team in the Northern part of the country would be good enough to beat them.

Not surprisingly, the talk eventually got around to wondering if Jeppe, who were impressive in beating Westville Boys’ High on the same day, wouldn’t be a worthy challenger and asking when that fixture is.

That’s when I weighed in, explaining the Jeppe don’t play Monument, they haven’t for quite a few years now and, I’ve heard that one of the reasons for them dropping the fixture is that Monument simply don’t have enough teams to make it worthwhile dedicating one of their scarce fixture dates to a meeting between the two schools.

When Jeppe played KES two weeks ago there were 23 rugby games on the day. When they last played Monument I would be surprised if there were more than 12 or 14.

Sure, it would be nice to see Jeppe play Monument at 1^st team level, especially this year, but the 1^st team game is just one encounter in the fixture – the others are also important.

That’s a fundamental difference in the way in which the traditional English medium schools (and some Afrikaans schools too) see the role of sport at school, and rugby in particular.

Well, at least it’s how the English schools used to approach sport. These days, I’m not always so sure anymore.

The extra-curricular programme is part of the educational activity of the school. It’s there to teach lessons and its final product – the girls and boys who are part of it – should exit the system with skills, values and attitudes that will give them every chance of success in the world beyond school.

It’s not supposed to do many of the sorts of things that the media and the greater school community – parents, old boys and supporters etc – are demanding from it.

In the case of rugby, it’s certainly not there to produce future professional players, although when a shining star is identified in any field, the school does have a responsibility to nurture and support that talent so that it, again, has every chance of success in the future.

Sport is competitive and that’s good to the extent that some lessons are better taught and learnt in the hot atmosphere of competition. When winning becomes the dominant value, however, things quickly go wrong.

Your values are what you live by, remember, and some are prepared to die for them. They are non-negotiable and unchangeable. If winning is your value then you are declaring that you will try to win at all costs. And when you do that, ethical and educational values that are seen as hindering you are discarded.

Your school may rise to the top of the rankings, and your list of old boys who become Springboks may grow, which brings fame and prestige to your school, but is sport’s role in the educational process being preserved?

I’ve gone on and on about the sorts of practices that go on in schools rugby that I find unacceptable, there’s no need to repeat them here. The point is that victories for the first rugby team are what the schools are after and stories of helping boys from disadvantaged backgrounds through bursaries, or preparing talented players for careers in rugby are really just excuses.

And it was never just about the first team. So, for Jeppe, for example, to give up one of its precious 2^nd term weekends to host Westville Boys’ High on a day that involved 600 boys from each school in all sorts of activities like they did last weekend, was way more valuable that using it to play a handful of rugby games against Monument, even if the 1^st team game would have determined who’s who this season.