Craven Week selecting is a whole new ball game

The Craven Week has been, for years, a fantastic rugby occasion. The best young players in the land all appearing on the same field in a never-ending stream of all that’s best about schoolboy rugby. It’s something to see and I’ve been fortunate to see it, almost without a break, for the past 30 years.

What makes it even more special are the traditions surrounding the week. Danie Craven, the man it was named after was adamant that it should be a festival, not a tournament, and that attractive, running rugby should be what everyone should strive for.

Those traditions have been dropped, quite long ago now. It’s become a tournament in all but name, driven by the TV coverage and feeding off the South African rugby mentality that believes winning is what counts and it doesn’t matter what the process on the way to victory is.

Another thing Craven insisted on was that every member of the various squads had to play one full game at the week. He didn’t want the reserves to be just bench-warmers. That one’s still in place, although it has morphed into something else entirely as transformation and racial representativity have become more and more a part of the week.

The provincial squads have been announced and it’s three weeks until the kick off. I wonder how many people know that every 23-man squad, from this year, has to have at least 12 players of colour in its ranks. That there have to be at least four players of colour on the field at any time and that, by the end of  the second round of fixtures, every player must have played a full game, with everyone getting chance to start a match.

Those arrangements aren’t there to give everyone a game. They are designed to prevent the coaches from taking a “first choice XV and group of reserves” approach. The reasons are obvious. There’s a perception that provinces will pick the 12 reserves and use them only as replacements while the 11 first choice boys will play most of the time.

There's a veiled accusation of racism in that, probably justified in some cases. It has, however, changed the dynamics of team selection and match day lineups drastically. It’s running the week along lines that are not totally rugby-related.

There has been more than the usual amount of outrage around the selections this year, in Joburg and around the country (I’d guess). The Golden Lions team has nine representatives from the school that is fourth best, at most, while the 1^st and second ranked teams have four and two players in the squad, respectively.

Well, if teams one and two are just about completely made up of white players they can’t expect to dominate a selection that has to feature 12 players of colour. It’s more complicated that that, though. It was explained to me by one of the current provincial coaches that the requirement that eight of the first day’s starting lineup have to sit out the second game means that you have to, in effect, chose two separate teams.

You pair players, he explained – when A sits out, he will be replaced by B, without weakening the team, and so on. That changes things. You no longer pick the best 23 overall, your selection has to take the “two team” reality into consideration.

In rugby, anywhere else in the world, you select your bench to cover positions in case of injury, or to provide impact late in the game. Not at the Craven Week. There the coaches are not allowed to make tactical substitutions in the first game, and in the second only the seven players who played on day one can be substituted, unless there are injuries. Given the way rugby has developed around the world, we are asking our Craven Week coaches to manage a completely different game.

And it has to happen in the context of the compulsory quota. It’s made a difficult job almost impossible. It’s gone way beyond choosing the best player in each position and expecting the top teams in each region to supply the bulk of the representatives. That’s what happens in normal rugby. This is something else altogether.

On that basis, I hesitate to do what I usually do at this time of the year: predict which provincial teams are going to stand out at the week. Some of the websites have done it already, I see. In the past I’d look at the top performing schools in the land and assume the provinces that they are located in will be the ones to watch.

These days that’s only half of the story.