Varsity Cup - efficient but not really satisfying

There's a fence outside the bar, under the pavilion at the Wits Rugby Club where I, and a good few other long-time supporters, have been watching Wits teams play for the last 40-odd years, or more.

That area is a no-go during Varsity Cup games. Try to stand there and the security will move you along - there's a sign they point you to saying you aren't allowed there and that's it.

That's an example, for me, of what's gone wrong in recent years with sport, including rugby.

Now, the Varsity Cup is a great competition, it breathed new life into club rugby, provided an alternate route into the professional game for players who didn’t shine as juniors and never went to the Craven Week and, most importantly, it made rugby accessible and popular among young black people.

Sadly, however, the competition lost its soul a bit when the unions began to see it as another feeder competition for their pro teams and sharp practices began to be uncovered. Some of the loopholes were closed, but it really isn’t the pure inter-varsity competition it was conceptualised to be anymore.

Still, I’m a Wits supporter, and I go along to their home games. I’m fortunate to have VIP tickets now and I’m well looked after, but I can’t stand in my spot of 40 years at the fence outside the bar any more.

Which brings me back to my point. I’ve been re-reading John McKnight and Peter Block’s The Abundant Community, which bemoans the way that communities have been replaced by systems and citizens are now consumers. It’s all driven by those who look for ways to make money out of us and while system living more efficient than community life, it isn’t satisfying. In fact we are intentionally kept dissatisfied, if we were ever satisfied we would stop buying. So they lie to us, and make false promises.

A feature of abundant communities are voluntary associations. The local sports club is one those. Wits Rugby Club is a type of community. The boys along the fenceline don’t live in the neighbourhood, but they are all associated – they are former players, alumni, parents of current or ex-players etc. We know each other by sight and some are friends, even if it’s only at Wits home games.

I’m thrilled, of course, that Wits did so well in the Varsity Cup this year. They were a shoe-in for the knockout phase when it was all brought to a halt by Covid-19, having beaten UCT, Tuks, UJ and Pukke and would have been great to see how they measured up against the mighty Maties.

For the fence community results are not the only thing, though. If they were we wouldn’t have carried on watching during some pretty lean years at the club. In fact, the only time we weren’t there was when rugby disappeared completely at the university at one stage. But we came back when it was revived thanks, among others, to the efforts of some wealthy old boys, a few of whom were regulars at the fence.

The Varsity Cup is brilliantly run. It’s well marketed and glitzy and a great night of boozy entertainment for the residential students. It’s a system, geared to consumers and the rugby is exciting and entertaining.

It’s efficient for sure, but for those who see Wits Rugby club as their community – and I’m certain there are similar old fogeys at the other varsities around the country too – it’s not entirely satisfying.

I’m wondering if, post Covid-19, when the money is less and big crowds are undesirable, we won’t see a resurgence of club rugby as a less efficient but more satisfying concept.

You can get The Abundant Community on takealot.com, when they start delivering books again.

Time to look at the two referees idea again?

I watched the 2014 UCT vs Pukke Varsity Cup final on Supersport’s Relive today – the most remarkable comeback to win you’re ever likely to see – but it was the 2-referees experiment that caught my eye.

The two in charge that night, Marius Van der Westhuizen and Cwengile Jadezweni, clearly had no idea how to handle it and seeing them both drawing a square in the air for the TMO at the same time was just embarrassing.

In those final frantic minutes Marius took over completely and JD disappeared, which was probably just as well, imagine if they made conflicting calls at that stage and UCT’s momentum was halted while they tried to sort it out.

The experiment was not repeated and there’s been no talk of it since. I do think it was a wasted opportunity, however, and much of the current refereeing mess could be sorted out by two officials, working in harmony according to a plan.

Little attention seemed to be paid to how the two would work together and how to divide their duties and responsibilities when the Varsity Cup experiment was introduced.

I was at the press conference when that year’s experimental laws were introduced – rubber studs on the jerseys of the props to improve binding was another one – and I asked what I thought was the obvious question: had the SA Referees Association sought advice from other games that have been using two officials all along? Basketball, hockey and water polo were the examples I gave. I was basically told to sit down and shut up, they have it all worked out, by Andre Watson who was there to explain the experimental law variations.

I concede that I had no right to interfere, but I still believe the idea of two refs is a good one, they just did it all wrong.

The key to those other games lies in the division of the field of play. In the Varsity Cup they divided the field into two by drawing a line between the centre of the two sets of goal posts. That meant both refs looked at attack and both looked at defence and nothing had changed except they both blew for the same offences generally.

I was a water polo referee for many years and at one time I was pretty well versed in the laws and interpretations of that game. The key to the interaction between the two referees there is that each one controls his particular zone of attack. He is in charge of what is called there and the other ref doesn’t butt in unless he sees a major foul (a penalty or a exclusion offence) that his colleague might miss. He positions himself in line with the last player in the backfield and has a wider angle view of the game from there. He is also well placed for the transition when possession changes hands.

The pool is divided into two diagonally, from corner to corner. Each refs is in charge of the sector to his right, which includes the whole of the goal-line on that side and none of the goal-line to his left.

Hockey and basketball are run much along the same lines.

Why didn’t they do that with rugby? Draw a line from corner flag to corner flag. Each ref runs an entire “red zone”, on attack or defence and the other one hangs back and watches off the ball including offsides (wouldn’t that be a good idea). The trailing ref can blow for penalty offences that are missed, but otherwise he defers to the ref in charge of that sector.

It’s not rocket science and it’s been worked out in detail in those other codes. We could have learnt from them, and the game would have been better for it, for my two cents worth.