The schools rugby season hasn’t started yet – although there
could well be some sort of “super” 8,12,16 or whatever, competition somewhere
where the boys are already playing games – but the debate is up and running,
and it’s not about the good things that the game brings to education.
No, it’s all negative and there are two camps: those who
believe that the professionalisation of the game at school level is a good
thing and that the standard of play evident at the top schools, and the quality
of the players emerging from them, excuses the methods used to get to that
level; and those who say it’s daft on all sorts of levels.
No prizes for guessing which side of the fence I’m sitting
on.
Among the many articles written on the issues is this one by
Mark Keohane:
He refers to the report on the inquiry into school rugby
coming out of New Zealand:
The articles remind us that things are not healthy, and that
the problem is not restricted to just us. It’s what I and others have been going on about for years
now. And at heart what we are saying is that while it may be right to begin
preparing the next generation of professional players early, that process
should not have anything to do with school rugby.
Sure, the schools are where the best coaches, the facilities
and the high levels of competition are found, but that’s not a good thing. It’s
selling the soul of the game, as Keohane points out. Worse, there is little
educational integrity left in what is happening around school rugby. And if
there is one thing that’s not debatable it’s that everything that happens in a
school has to be educationally accountable in the end.
South Africa won’t remain in the top tier of international
rugby if we don’t keep the pipeline of talented young players flowing, no-one’s
denying that, what I’m saying is that it isn’t the job of the schools to do
that. We also have the unique imperative of having to increase the number of
black players at the top levels and, while schools should be, and are, doing
that, those running the game can’t outsource that responsibility and wash their
hands of it.
I have confessed to conflicting interests in all of this. I’m
a lover of schoolboy rugby, of both types. I love going to the Easter rugby
festivals to watch some of the “top 10” teams play, and I go to the Craven Week
every year and I’m always astounded at the quality of the teams and by the talent
on show.
But I also love hearing that when King Edward play
Maritzburg College, for example, that there will be 23 rugby matches on the day,
and I enjoyed going to King David Victory Park, for example, on a Wednesday to
see them play a 12 a-side game against Saheti (reduced in numbers because of
the BokSmart regulations which, in that case, didn’t do the game much good);
and I especially enjoyed watching Roosevelt play Greenside – in a game with 15
black players in each team, refereed by a white woman – and hearing the players
respectfully call her ma’am and abide by all her decisions without question.
You cannot argue that both types of school rugby aren’t important
and valuable. If only they could both continue to thrive, side, by side. But
they can’t, and they don’t anymore. The elite, professional side of the game is murdering
the other one and the killers, with blood on their hands, are those who believe
that winning 1st team rugby games is the primary measure of success
for a school and that school rugby is where the preparation of players for the
professional game should take place. Those who support what’s going on, or
condone the practices adopted to make these things happen are also culpable.
The unsavoury practices that take place have been listed
often enough. The one getting most attention right now is recruitment of
players. That’s the big one – if you strip the other schools of their talent so
that your team can be stronger you are encouraging them to give up and you are creating
a small pool of super schools that no-one else is good enough to play against.
If you can’t see why that’s bad then you aren’t paying attention.
Then there’s doping. The six 2018 Craven Week players bust for
steroids is, by definition, just the tip of the ice berg. Don’t kid yourselves that
all of the muscular giants we see every Saturday morning are clean.
Funding in some schools (and its source is irrelevant) is
being used in eye-watering proportions to pay for elite rugby programmes. It’s
being used to pay for bursaries, gymnasiums, coaches, professional support
staff, all aimed at victory for the first team squad – 30 odd-boys in schools
with 1 000 pupils typically – where’s the educational accountability in that?
It’s slash and burn agriculture. A few schools can brag
about their top 10 finishes in the rankings and they may in the years to come
see a handful of their ex-pupils make provincial teams, or even the Springboks,
but they are leaving a desert around them.
That fun, mass participation, part of the game is
disappearing, those smaller schools who pay low-key Wednesday rugby are opting
for other sports and the majority of players in all the schools are simply not
enjoying it anymore. Fewer and fewer of them carry on playing after school.
That’s what Keo, and the New Zealand report, mean when they
say that the professionalisation of rugby at school level is killing the game.
And because everyone knows that it’s happening, it really is murder.
