Why were our water polo teams so badly beaten at the Olympics?

 

I could write a book on this. Many of our top ex-players have commented on the poor performance of our water polo teams at the Tokyo Olympics and most of them are part of the story I’d tell. I was just an outsider looking in. I did that for 30 years, though, and the story hasn’t really changed in all that time.

In fact, the reason why I can come up with a lengthy rant like this on a Saturday morning is that it’s not an original story. There are parts of what I’ve written below that I lifted verbatim from an article I wrote 15 years ago after the SA team was thumped at the World Championships.

The bottom line is that water polo in this country is its own worst enemy. I’ve told polo people down the years that your downfall is that you eat your own young. That’s harsh, but certainly it’s true to say that there are only a handful of you spread across the land, yet you are incapable of getting along with each other.

Provincialism is rampant, but that applies to other sports too. The problem with water polo, in my view, is that too many nasty, toxic narcissists have served in senior positions (and in positions lower down) over the years. They seem to hang around for ever, and rise through the ranks, and no-one is capable of getting rid of them. In fact, like in politics, it seems that being an A-hole is a pre-requisite for certain jobs.

The result has been that decisions are made for the wrong reasons, capable people (many of whom are not too kosher themselves anyway) are left out of management or fired from coaching positions. Our best players aren’t chosen for teams – too often they don’t make themselves available for selection - and transformation hasn’t been managed as successfully as it has been in other codes that face the same problems.

Then there’s a dysfunctional mother body that seems to be anti-water polo and has down the years tried its best to hobble one of its own divisions through interference, poorly conceived transformation strategies and non-funding. In fact, the national swimming body sees water polo as a potential source of income for itself, rather than as something it should be investing in.

There’s no money of course, because they messed up their last sponsorship so badly and the former sponsors poisoned the well so effectively that no sponsor will touch them, despite the fact that swimming has been our most successful code at the Olympics (and is again this year, so far).

So, to get back to the question, why do our teams, with so many talented players in them, get beaten so badly? Well, obviously we are overmatched. We are up against fulltime professional players who have been participating in top leagues and international competitions for four years since the last Olympic Games. Our players got into the water as a team for the first time after they arrived in Tokyo. They had to pay for their preparations themselves, while their opponents have been given all the necessities and luxuries needed to succeed at this level.

We never had a chance, but there were moments in games when both the men and women showed what could be. The top players in the world were dispossessed on occasion and there were times when the opponents had to use all their skill and experience on defence to keep us out, and we still got some of them excluded, and scored one or two great goals.

One of our most experienced administrators compared watching the games to a documentary on clubbing baby seals, and then he had a go at the provincial affiliation of the coaching staff. Well, I watched every match and from time to time our little seals turned on their attackers and snarled at them, making them take a careful step back. That’s what we expected of them and, for me, it made it worth getting up in the middle of the night for.

The wisdom of going the Olympics in the first place has been questioned. I agree that we should rather be playing in second tier competitions where we are more competitive, and we’ve done quite well in some of those over the years. I remember reading at the time of our readmittance that, for water polo to continue as an Olympic sport, there has to be a representative from all five continents, including Africa there. That’s what the five interlocking rings mean. The Olympic Charter requires that the game be played on four of the five continents, but in the spirit of things, the continental champions of all five are invited. So there’s always a slot for us (or Egypt) and I guess we have to be there or there’s no chance of us ever improving.

But we really do have to do things better. The solution is actually quite easy, on paper. Create a development system that builds on the undeniable talent that we have in our schools (and include transformation in it), institute a better competition structure, get rid of the A-holes and appoint good administrators. Then choose the best players and the best coaches and support them financially.

I know that’s probably never going to happen, not all of it, but we could make a start by simply learning to get on with each other. And, for Pete’s sake, stop eating your young!

Some pretty sports fields, and some not so pretty

Here are some more memories. I was hesitant about the second part - I don't want to be cruel to anyone, or to diminish the hard work that's done at those venues. They are places that stick out in memories, though, and this exercise is all about remembering.

 

The good and bad of places to play

IN MY 30 years of covering school sport I’ve been to just about every school and sports club, in Joburg certainly, and also in most other parts of the country. Sports fields get, in our drought afflicted country, an inordinate share of the scarce water resources and they often stand out as emerald jewels in semi-desert surroundings. They are the favourite children of groundsmen and curators, and are lovingly cared for.

I’ve come across some spectacular venues on my travels and some that, for whatever reasons, are not quite as nice.

I decided, seeing as I’m in the business here of compiling lists, to include 10 great venues that I have been to, and 10 that are not as good. It’s a subjective exercise, based only on places I personally visited. We all know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and my evaluation is skin deep – it doesn’t consider any of the emotional attachments, the personal history of triumph and disaster, and the sweat deposited by those who trained and played on those fields.

So, expecting to catch flak, here are my 10 nicest school sports grounds, and 10 that are not so great.

The good

I’ve done this exercise before – I listed my 10 most beautiful schools rugby fields in a column, and the 10 nicest cricket fields I’d been to in another, and of course there were objections to them, as there will be to this combined list of the nicest places to watch school cricket or rugby.

1 Camps Bay High School

Coastal schools obviously have the advantage when it comes to beautiful backdrops to their sportsfields. The mountains and the sea make for spectacular settings and when you have both, it’s an unbeatable combination.

Camps Bay has that. We went on rugby tour there when I was at Highland North and I remember marvelling at it even then, when I was young and winning the game was the biggest thing in my life. Stand behind the posts on the Eastern side and you have Lions Head and the Twelve Apostles soaring above you; from the other end it looks like the ground behind the dead ball line drops off directly into the Atlantic Ocean.

We won the game that day, I think, but it’s that view that I will always remember.

2 Burger Field St John’s College.

It’s always about the backdrop when it comes to beautiful sports fields and, although there are no mountains, and no sea, the main rugby field at St John’s, carved out of the side of Houghton Ridge, has a glorious one.

It’s the back end of the Herbert Baker designed school building. Go around to the other side and you’ll see that the College was designed to look like one of the old public schools of England. From the rugby field side, it’s a soaring structure, built out of the same quartzite that the ridge is made of.

You won’t find a better man-made backdrop to a sports field anywhere in the country.

3 Bridge House Franschoek

No part of Franschoek, nestled in the Berg River valley below the Drakenstein and Franschoek mountains, is not beautiful. So, obviously any cricket ground located in the area is bound to be spectacular – and the field at Bridge House School is certainly that.

The school was only established in 1995, so I never knew about it until some games at the 2018 Khaya Majola Week were played there and I got to see it. The school is built on a corner of Graham Beck’s Bellingham wine estate and because it’s new, the trees planted around the field still have to grow into big providers of shade, but the outfield’s a carpet and the wicket, they told me, is excellent.

Architecturally, the school buildings next to the field have touch of Cape Dutch about them and behind them the mountains soar into the heavens. It’s quite a sight.

4 Pollock Oval Grey High School

There’s a bench next to the main cricket field at Grey High School in Port Elizabeth marking the fact that the field has been named the Pollock Oval, in honour of the school’s greatest sporting alumnus and South Africa’s greatest cricketer, Graeme Pollock. His achievements have been engraved on it, reminding current cricketers at the school just how great he was and, undoubtedly, inspiring them.`

And it’s quite a field. It is surrounded by massive old trees that cast a deep shade, overlooked by the main school building with its soaring clock tower. In one corner is the old pavilion, almost 100 years old, next to the new one – an artful blend of the old English cricket pavilion and Cape Dutch architectural styles.

Grey has produced the most SA Schools cricketers of any school in the land. Playing and practicing on a field like that must certainly have something to do with that.

5 De Villiers Oval SACS

Age has a lot to do with the beauty of sports fields. It’s difficult to make a newly constructed facility look great. SACS is the oldest school in the land and it has been on its current site, the Montabello Estate in Newlands below Devil’s Peak, since 1959.

That air of age and tradition, when combined with a spectacular setting, the mountain in the background and rain forest-like kloof vegetation just beyond the boundary – if it’s raining anywhere in Cape Town, it’s raining in Newlands, they say – makes the cricket field at SACS one of the most beautiful I have seen, even during the drought that the city was experiencing the last time I was there.

6 Brug Street Paarl

It’s the mountains, again, that make Paarl Boys’ High’s rugby field special. In this case the Du Toitskloof mountains loom beyond the touch line on one side of the field and Paarlberg on the other. When you sit in the stands, in front of you are the Berg river and the ‘onder-dorp’ beyond that, and behind you, the ‘bo-dorp’, the vineyards, Paarlberg, and the Taal Monument.

There’s a tangible sense of conflicted history about the town of Paarl which ties in somehow to one of the big curiosities of school rugby – Paarl is in the heart of the Boland, yet the rugby players at its schools play for Western Province at the Craven Week.

The Hoerjongenskool Paarl – Paarl Boys’ High or Booishaai - is part of SA school rugby’s elite. They are seldom outside the top three in the land. Their big derby against neighbours Paarl Gimnasium is played at the town’s Faure Street Stadium. Brug Street could never accommodate the crowds that turn up for that game. But it’s there that those boys learn to play the game – it left a deep impression on me.

7 The Mark Stevens Aquatic Centre, King Edward VII School

I’m getting ahead of myself with this one I know. The indoor pool at KES was only completed during the lockdown, and I haven’t seen a race swum, or a polo ball thrown in anger in it yet, but it’s the most exciting school sports development in Joburg in years.

I went to look at it a few times during the construction process and I went to take a look after it was finished and filled with water. It’s going to be something special.

The problem with Joburg’s temperate climate is that our summers are actually quite short. It’s too cold, really to train outdoors before late October, and by March the water’s getting cool again. So an indoor pool is important if you want to take water sports seriously. KES has one now and I predict they will soon return to their former glory as top dogs in the pool.

Facilities like that aren’t cheap and it’s incredible that there’s an old boy who was generous enough to foot the bill for its construction.

The annual King Edward Water Polo Tournament is the most prestigious in the country, when it’s next staged it will be in the best school pool in the land.

8 St Stithians Wayne Joubert Field

Sports fields in Joburg are not well known for spectacular views, the Wayne Joubert field in the uppermost part of the sprawling St Stithians Campus is an exception.

It’s not one of the school’s main fields – It’s a bit remote from the rest of the campus and it’s quite a steep walk to get there, but it does have floodlights, courtesy of Fifa, who used it as one of the training grounds for the 2010 World Cup. So it’s a venue for night matches – rugby and cricket, and the Saints soccer section is based up there.

The Higher Ground, a popular independently-run restaurant and watering hole, overlooks the field and there are few better places to watch sport than from its verandah, with a refreshment in your hand. You look down on the field and the school campus, across the Braamfontein spruit valley and up at the ultra modern urban landscape of the Sandton CBD.

That part of Joburg certainly isn’t flat and featureless and the Wayne Joubert field is a good place to observe it from.

9 TC Mitchell Oval St Alban’s College

St Alban’s College is located in a scenic part of Pretoria. It’s leafy and hilly, with lots of open space by way of nature reserves, parks and bird sanctuaries. The school is located between two of those - the Strubens Dam bird sanctuary and the Faerie Glen nature reserve.

The cricket field is on the nature reserve side and it is overlooked by a koppie and surrounded by trees with a spruit running along just beyond the boundary on the Eastern side. It’s an immaculately tended playing area. The pavilion has a breezy viewing deck, a great place to watch the action from on a typical hot Pretoria summers day.

The other fields at St Alban’s are similarly pleasant. The annual Independent Schools Festival is permanently staged at the school. You can see why.

10 Meadows, Michaelhouse

When I went to the Khaya Majola Week at Michaelhouse in 2018 it was the first time I had been to the school. It’s a magnificent place – red brick buildings dotted around a forested parkland and immaculate sportsfields all over the place.

The cricket week was head quartered in the Red and White – the clubhouse at the main cricket field and it’s a beautiful setting. The best of the fields, I thought, however was Meadows, the main rugby field, where there were also Khaya Majola Week matches played that week. 

Without it’s posts and markings, it was difficult to see exactly where the rugby fields lay in that extensive meadow. The edge of the vast lawn merged into the forest on the one end. On the day I was watching cricket there a Midlands misty drizzle descended, driving the players off the field. It was magical, one of the most beautiful of all the many beautiful places that my sports reporting travels have taken me to.

 

 

The not so good

1 Gelvandale Cricket Club

There are some other contenders, but the honour of the ugliest of all sports fields I’ve been at goes to the Gelvandale Cricket Club in Port Elizabeth. I was there at the 2008 Coke Week when the Gauteng under-19 side played against KwaZulu-Natal.

Gelvandale occupies an illustrious spot in cricket history in this country. Many cricketing greats from the apartheid days played there, and honour and glory goes to those who are keeping the game alive in the township. But I wondered why the boys from KES and St John’s, DHS and Kearsney have to spend one fifth of what was the highlight week of their cricketing lives so far, there.

To be kind, the ground slopes at about 10 degrees, north to south, and has doesn’t have much of what most people would call grass. It is flanked on one side by an electricity distribution station and the southern boundary is the fence of the local cemetery – one wag among the spectators wondered out loud which was worse, Eskom or the graveyard - they both had the stench of death about them.

Then there was the real stench, wafting in from a local sewage works and driving everyone into their cars with the windows up, in the heat and humidity.

2 Distell, Stellenbosch

There have been some other awful settings, often in places where you expect better. I remember the Khaya Majola Week in Stellenbosch where, instead of playing in a lovely setting among the vines and under the mountains, the players were expected to be inspired on a ground belonging to one of the liquor manufacturers, surrounded by railway carriages and empty packing crates, all underlain by that smell of stale booze that you get in a pub at opening time.

Most of the games that week were played at Stellenbosch University where the fields and setting were sublime, so Distell was only unattractive by comparison, I concede. And the wicket, I was told, was very good – Boland senior cricket was based there at one stage.

3. Witrand, Potchefstroom

At interprovincial weeks in Potchefstroom there are inevitably matches staged at Witrand, a local mental hospital. The situation there is similar to Distell – the field is in great condition and the wicket is so good that there have been first class games played there in the past. Aesthetically, however, it pales in comparison to the settings at the NW University’s Fanie du Toit Complex with its Senwes Stadium where the bulk of the games at the Khaya Majola Week I attended were played.

Knowing what the buildings surrounding the Witrand field are used for is a bit intimidating, and the odd inmate would press his face up against the fence from time to time, which is disconcerting, to say the least.

4 HTS Langlaagte

When I was teaching at Highland North Boys’ High School we played rugby in the, then, Administrator’s Cup league competition. You had no say over who you played against and we ended up going to places where we would never have ventured if we had a choice.

One of those was Langlaagte. The school was in the middle of an industrial area, the rugby field didn’t have much grass and it was located between the railway tracks and the mine dumps, which wasn’t great when the wind came up in the second half of the game we played there. Then there were the opposition players, most of them were from a neighbouring orphanage. In my mind’s eye all 15 were identical – around 5’11’’ tall, scrawny, crew-cut, covered in scabs and hard as nails. My memory might be exaggerating the situation, but it was certainly intimidating.

The 1^st team game ended in a 0-0 draw, which sums it all up perfectly.

5 Willowmoore Park

The HQ of Easterns cricket falls into both the good and the bad categories. The stadium used to have those industrial revolution era concrete light pylons, which have since been removed. The main stadium is a bit barren and it’s Northern end abuts on the sleazier side of Benoni’s CBD.

The B field is similarly bleak, but go down to the C and D fields and you are transported into a charming rural setting: fields ringed by blue gums, and bordered by a vlei lined with the willow trees that the complex gets its name from.

It’s as pleasant a setting to watch cricket in as any I’ve been to.

6 Benny’s Care Sports Academy

I speak about the remarkable achievements of this little school in deep rural Limpopo elsewhere and their achievements are all the more noteworthy when you see the field they practice and play on.

I went there with the sponsors one year before their under-12s left for the Danone Nations Cup world finals and I was taken aback to see that they didn’t actually have a field. There was an area of cleared veld with markings on it which over-use had rendered completely grassless.

We watched the coach take his team though a practice session on it which included some elaborate drills that he had learnt when he was sent on a Fifa Coaching course. All part of the Benny’s magic.

7 The Alex Cricket Stadium

At a time when Cricket South Africa was still putting money into their development programme, they built a field in Alexandra Township, Northwest of Johannesburg. I went there on a press junket soon after it was completed and it was pretty impressive, well grassed, with a freshly laid wicket and newly built changerooms.

The problem of course is the location of the field. It’s on Alex’s notorious West Bank, so, it’s prone to flooding and surrounded by the dwellings of some of the poorest of the poor. It’s not an easy place to get to and, once there, the environment simply doesn’t allow for the quiet, relaxed atmosphere that is so much part of the summer game.

There were matches played there during the 2017 Khaya Majola Week and the facility was starting to show signs of wear. By 2020, I believe, it had fallen into disrepair and is being neglected. 

8 UJ Rugby Stadium

The UJ stadium in Melville has improved with age. It was a soulless concrete bowl when it was first built, designed - I’m guessing - by the same architects who constructed the then RAU campus across the road to resemble a giant laager. Now that the trees that were planted then have grown and the bright grey concrete has weathered a bit, the edges have been softened and the place is a lot more pleasant.

It’s still a horribly designed stadium, though. There’s a Tartan athletics track around the field, which puts it pretty far away from the spectators, and the massive grandstand rises 100m above the level of the field. If you are sitting in the good seats outside the clubhouse at the top of the stand you definitely need binoculars to see what’s going on down on the grass.

My abiding memory of the place is, however, being very cold there. In the years that I was a Transvaal schools selector we always held Craven Week trials there, the field is down below ground level, surrounded by water and when the sun goes down on a winter evening, it’s freezing!

9 Meulsloot, Paul Roos Gimnasium

I’ve included Meulsloot, a mud patch at Paul Roos Gim where the Golden Lions beat the Griffons 47-29 on the final day of the 2015 Craven Week, but it was the circumstances, rather than the field itself that made it a horrible place to play that day.

The Craven Week is all about the final day’s fixtures. The top two sides play the last game on the A field, the teams ranked third and fourth the second last game, the fifth and sixth ranked the one before that, and so on. Once the A field schedule is full, the matches are shifted onto the B and C fields at the venue.

The 2015 weeks saw lots of rain, so only two games were played on the main field on the last day, to preserve it for the televised main game. The Lions might have got an early A field fixture if it were not for that, but the record shows that they lost their first two games in 2015 and were relegated to the B field on the final day. No matter where the week might be, when that happens the ground you are dispatched to will be remembered as an awful one.

10 Pretoria Boy’s High Hockey Field

The Pretoria Boys’ High School campus is the most spectacular I’ve ever been to. The buildings and grounds are sprawled across a hillside, surrounded by forests, with ponds and wetlands dotted around it.

To call anything about it ugly would be ridiculous, but I’m including the hockey astroturf, with the athletics track around it, as one of the less than superb fields I’ve been to, simply because it’s weird watching sport there.

Whenever there’s a track around a field the spectators are removed from the action and that applies here. The astro has also been placed in the middle of what was an existing field, so the stands and embankments are some distance away. I found it difficult to feel any excitement watching hockey from there, and in my newspaper days, impossible to take action photographs.

It’s even stranger in athletics season. There are structures on the sidelines of the hockey field and when the middle and long distance races are on, the runners disappear behind them and appear again a while later, much like the horses in the Durban July who are out of sight for a period when they go behind the drill hall in the center of the Greyville race course.

The remoteness of their spectators doesn’t seem to bother the Boys’ High hockey players much, though, their first team is consistently among the best in the land.

 

Some of the special people who have kept school sport going

 The first excerpt from my book posted here got quite a response. So, here’s another one. It’s my recollection of some of the adults involved in school sport that I’ve come across down the years. Wherever you find a successful programme you will find teachers, parents, coaches and administrators who are prepared to make incredible sacrifices. The give, give and carry on giving. There are way more of them than the 10 I list below, I know. By their nature, I guess some of them may be embarrassed by what I’ve said about them. They deserve all the praise and glory that comes their way.

 

Some special adults

 

SCHOOL sport wouldn’t exist if it were not for the hundreds of adults who organise it. Men and women, teachers and others, who have been coaching and managing teams, administrating programmes, running competitions, catering, transporting and administering First Aid. And for most of the years that I’ve been involved most of them have been doing it as volunteers, without being paid. 

I could trawl through my memories and pick out individuals at just about every school that I dealt with who have been keeping sport alive and thriving in the places that they are at, many of them over long periods of time. They have become an essential part of the communities that they operate it, and they play a massive role in the way that the children in those communities are being raised.

We owe a massive debt to them. That they are increasingly being replaced by outside experts in the current era of professionalised school sport is a tragedy. The system was healthy when the majority of the men and women who were shaping the way that sport was played at schools were of the type I mention here.

My list could run to dozens, but I’ve committed myself to just 10. So here they are, bearing in mind that I could have drawn up 10 lists like this one. 

1 Michael Brady

There was a time when I tried my hand at water polo refereeing. I had to referee the games at school anyway, so I decided to take it more seriously. I joined the refs association and went to the meetings. I enjoyed the challenge of studying the laws and applying them in pressure situations. I never lasted long, however, because I just didn’t enjoy it. I love the game, but I hated refereeing it. I found that water polo is just such an angry place. 

Water polo people in this country don’t know how to get along with each other. There is infighting and backstabbing aplenty and rabid provincialism and the sport is subject to the control of Swimming South Africa, a pretty dodgy organisation with serious control issues.

The coaches scream like banshees on the side of the pool – in a way that isn’t tolerated in any other game – the parents hurl abuse at the opposition and the referees cop it from all sides and take it out on their whistles. 

Worst of all, for a referee, much of what happens takes place underwater, or behind a wall of white spray, so you are guessing most of the time.

Under all those circumstances, you have to marvel at a referee who has stuck it out for 30 years and who has somehow risen above all that toxicity to be something pretty unique in water polo – someone who everyone involved in the game actually likes and respects.

That’s Mike Brady and he’s done it through the sheer force of his personality, and the sacrifices he makes. He runs a group of referees in Joburg and they are on duty at all of the tournaments that take place. He is a superb organiser, often acting as tournament director as well, and he referees the odd game too, while giving the glory of the big fixtures to one of the youngsters he is bringing along.

More importantly, he does it all with a smile on his face and a friendly word to everyone he encounters. The players, parents, coaches and teachers somehow lose that simmering anger when they encounter him. How different water polo would be if there were more Mike Bradys.

2 Norman McFarland

In all the years that I coached and watched schoolboy rugby I never came across anyone who thought as deeply about the game and was as innovative as Norman McFarland. He coached the King Edward VII School first team in a period when they were very successful and they achieved those results through having superb skills but also through the things that Norman introduced to give them the edge over opponents who were often much bigger than they were.

McFarland, who passed away at the age of 79 in 2019, reinvented the game, and he did it because in those days you had to coach the players that came to your school – no shopping to fill gaps – and he made up for any deficiencies in size and natural ability by out-thinking his opponents.

So, famously, his teams employed three-man scrums and two-man lineouts, negating the size disadvantage that they were at, and they beat teams that were clearly physically superior to them. There is a story, retold at his memorial service, that the International Rugby Board actually changed the laws of the game because of his tactics. I suspect that’s apocryphal, but I was a Union referee those days and I do recall that we would spend a lot of time at our monthly law discussion meetings trying to figure out what was legal and what wasn’t and how to referee his teams.

To those of us who coached the teams who had to play KES in those days Norman came across as quite an abrasive character. Looking back now, I guess we just didn’t like the fact that we never won. Certainly, when I’d meet up with him in later life when he worked at St John’s, and after his retirement, he was always friendly, kind, and interested in the things I’d written – he made me feel special and I was always happy to see him.

Before Norman McFarland, coaching school rugby was pretty rudimentary and non-scientific. He changed all of that and was way ahead of his time. 

3 Morgan Pillay

I have attended the under-19 Khaya Majola Cricket Week (and its predecessor, the Nuffield Week) just about every year since 1989. At the 1994 week, hosted at Kearsney College I met a young teacher from Pietermaritzburg, Morgan Pillay. He was on the local organising committee, tasked with keeping track of the state of play in the various matches being played around the area, so he worked quite closely with the media who were there. It was the beginning of a friendship which has gone on for 36 years now and in that time I watched Morgan grow into the best sports administrator I have ever come across and one of the most valuable people in schools cricket in the country.

He has been the permanent organising secretary of the Khaya Majola since 1996. It’s an honorary position – he doesn’t get paid anything more than expenses for doing it – and he has kept his real job as a mathematics teacher all along. The tournament is just a week long, but organising it is an all-year affair, so it’s amazing that he has found the time to do it for so many years.

He has fine-tuned the running of the week over the years to the extent that it runs like clockwork now. The wheel isn’t re-invented every year. Pillay’s personality and his unique style of leadership – he is incredibly demanding, but makes those demands with so much charm that it’s impossible to say no – is what makes it work.

Morgan’s birthday, December 18th, always falls slap bang in the middle of the week, so he’s never home for it. He says it’s tough being away from home, but then he does get to spend his birthday every year surrounded by great friends and in the service of the youth. That’s Morgan Pillay – an administrator who is in it for the right reasons. Oh that there were more of them in cricket!

4 Dave Pitcairn

Dave Pitcairn was responsible for profoundly changing the schools water polo landscape in South Africa. When he became principal of Reddam House School in Cape Town after successful spells as a teacher and coach at Jeppe High School for Boys and St Stithians, he set about making it the top water polo school in the land. He managed that in a remarkably short time and, in the process, developed a model that has been emulated by other new private schools, to the extent that the balance of power has shifted away from the older traditional schools in most of the provinces.

He also revived Western Province Schools water polo and made them the top province in the land.

I first met Dave as a rugby and water polo coach at Jeppe. He went to work as a sports officer at Wits University for a while and then taught at St Stithians. He grew into a formidable coach in both rugby and polo. We were on the provincial executive committees of both together and I was involved in coaching provincial teams with him on occasion. I remember thinking that I was way out of my depth when it came to his technical knowledge of both sports.

His motivational talks were on completely different level. I found myself wanting to jump into the water myself more than once.

He took all of that to Cape Town and he wasn’t happy with the state of Western Province schools water polo when he got there – they were a distant third behind Natal and Transvaal those days – so he set about transforming the game at that level too. He got his some of his ex Saints players who were studying at UCT and Stellenbosch involved as coaches and, before you knew it, WP were tops – a position they still occupy.

Dave and his wife Dee, also a school principal, later moved to Australia where they both run schools. He has left deep footprints and a lasting legacy. He made a huge impression on anyone he met. Me included. 

5 Brian Webster

I met Brian Webster at Johannesburg Otters Water Polo Club where we played together in the mighty third team. He was teaching at St David’s at the time and I was running Transvaal Schools water polo. We got him on board as a coach, it must have been in the early 80s, and nothing was ever the same again. A razor sharp wit, an unbelievably sarcastic tongue and a complete inability to suffer fools gladly are what I remember, and what I continued to come across, as I drifted in and out of his considerable presence down the years.

He taught at King Edward School for a number of years and in that time they became the top polo school in the land - there’s always heaps of talent among those boys, and his rough and ready style suited the sort of culture you get in that type of boys schools.

From there he went to St Stithians where he was as successful, in a different setting. He re-invented himself as a girls water polo coach at some stage and played a big role in the development of the game into the fastest growing girls sport in schools in the country.

He eventually stepped down from senior coaching and took junior teams at Saints that hardly ever lost. He remained in charge there, though, and together with his wife Bridget, he invented and initially ran the Saints Invitational Tournament that others are getting the credit for these days.

At the same time, he stayed involved at a provincial schools level. He ran Gauteng schools polo and expertly organised the SA Schools Championships when asked to. He also ran Crusaders Water Polo, the senior club based at Saints and in the holidays he organised coaching clinics and took teams on overseas tours.

He has since left Joburg. Bridget got a job a prestigious girls school in Grahamstown and Brian has gone along. He runs the tuckshop there, and coaches some polo. Grahamstown is now getting the Webby treatment. It will never be the same again, poolside, for them.

Brian Webster was a constant, sometimes disruptive, presence wherever school water polo was being played. He has left a lasting presence. 

6 Di Williamson

Di Williamson began teaching at Highlands North Boys’ High School one year after I did. She stayed there for another 16 years after I left and then moved across to Saheti School where, although she has retired, she still coaches the swimmers. 

Di was a gifted science teacher who produced good results in the classroom, but it was a swimming coach that she is best known. She coached at the school, and also had her own squad of swimmers who she coached professionally, a number of whom went on to earn provincial and national colours. Later on she specialised in coaching competition lifesaving and open water swimming and has had much success in those.

When I became involved in swimming administration I came to lean heavily on her support. Her phenomenal work rate, combined with the friendly relationships she had with the swimmers and their parents, made her the ideal team manager and she accompanied me on countless internal provincial tours and two overseas trips with SA Schools teams.

Her scientific background meant that she was able to fathom the intricacies of swimming electronic timing devices in the early days when very few others knew how to operate them, so she became a fixture on the ETD computer at galas, along with everything else she was doing. 

Di Williamson epitomises one of the essential foundations of school sport: the indefatigable, behind the scenes worker without whom things would never happen. There are many of them in schools– most of them women – Di Williamson was the one I was blessed to have as a friend and colleague.  

7 Adi Norris 

In my early days of reporting on school sport I got to know the people who were involved in organising primary school soccer and cricket in Joburg. The remarkable thing was that they were practically the same group. The two committees had different chairman, but they had plenty of members in common – passionate young men who were prepared to sacrifice hours of time so that little boys could play those games.

Fast forward 30 years and, amazingly, quite a few of them are still involved, although retirements are staring to take their toll now. 

One of those is Adi Norris, although he moved into high school sport at St John’s College later, and he is still going strong. He joined the St John’s staff in 1990, at the prep school but later moved across to the College where he has coached the 1st cricket team for years and played a part in the development of many cricketers who have gone on to higher honours including, recently, Devon Conway who is the New Zealand national team. 

He was responsible for the introduction of soccer as a sport in the high school and coaches that, as well as the under-16 rugby team.

He has also become synonymous with the St John’s Easter rugby festival. He has had a hand in much of the organisation of the event for the past 25 years, but his major contribution has been looking after the visitors, coaches and players. The relationships he has built up with the schools over the years have played a major part in ensuring that this festival consistently attracts more of the top-ranked schools in the country than the other two Johannesburg Easter events. Schools don’t accept invitations to events like this, he told me once, coaches do. His philosophy is that if you make the occasion special enough for the coaches, they will ensure that their teams will come back again.

Adi is the modern version of the fabled old school schoolmaster. A bachelor, married to his work, who keeps on contributing year after year. He is one of that rare breed of teacher-coaches who could probably coach any sport he was asked to, and do it successfully. He has made a massive contribution to the unique type of education that a school like St John’s offers. It’s impossible to imagine the place without him.

8 Tutty Faber 

Schools can only dream of having old boys/parents/supporters like Tutty Faber at King Edward VII School 

He matriculated at the school in 1957, having attended King Edward Prep School, and played 1st team rugby and cricket. He qualified as a civil engineer and played rugby for the then Transvaal in 1961 and 1962. In time his sons attended the prep and high schools and Tutty served on the governing bodies of both, eventually as chairman at both schools. He was also the Chairman of the Strenue Trust. 

It’s more than 35 years now since his sons have left the school, but his association has continued. He began coaching the under-14 (previously under-13) rugby team in 1982 and continues to do so. He has also coached the shotput athletes for all those years. In recognition of his service the South rugby field at KES - where the under-14s practice and play - was renamed the Tutty Faber field in 2007. He is a generous benefactor to the Prep and High schools, supporting building projects and funding scholarships.

My first contact with him was through rugby – my under-13 teams played his and I can’t recall ever winning any of those games. I remember him entering into a lengthy and complicated discussion of the laws of the game at a referees meeting in those early days and he has remained an expert ever since. His teams were coached to play running rugby, underpinned by a firm grasp of the basic skills and superb fitness. It was the foundation on which generations of King Edward 1st teams were built in the years that followed. 

More than anything else, Tutty Faber is a gentleman. You always get the impression that he is pleased to see you, and I never saw him lose his cool. To outsiders like me, he symbolised the consistent striving for excellence that King Edward is known for. Other schools have supporters who are as dedicated and passionate about their schools as he is, he could teach most of them how it can be done with class. 

9 Ernest Botha

When I was part of the group of teachers who decided to establish soccer as an official sport at our schools, we knew we had to speak to someone for advice on how to go about it. There was only one man to call - Ernest Botha. Ernie wasn’t a teacher; he was a professional photographer by trade, but he has been a presence in schools and youth football in Joburg for 50 years. He was a coach, referee and administrator and yes, he told us exactly how to draw up a constitution, how to organise a league and knockout competition and who to affiliate to.

In all the years that I was involved in school sport I don’t think I came across anyone quite as dedicated as he was. He’d be coaching at one school, helping another to get the game started at another, refereeing in every spare moment and serving on the local amateur football association executive, all at the same time.

His was a lifetime love of children and the game. And it is still going on. A few years ago, I went to a rugby match at a school in the South of Joburg and noticed there were primary school soccer games being played on a nearby field. I wandered over, looking to take a few pictures, and found the referee was Ernest. He was well into his sixties by then, and he didn’t stray much outside of the centre circle, but he blew his whistle with authority and the boys were well under control. I chatted to him at the end of the game and he told me he would be reffing all four games to be played that afternoon because the schools involved couldn’t get anyone else – that’s Ernie Botha.

10 Khaya Majola 

The name Khaya Majola has become synonymous with schools cricket ever since the under-19 interprovincial week was named after him in 2001. At the time of his death the year before, he oversaw amateur cricket at Cricket South Africa. Before that, he ran the CSA development programme and those who worked with him say that the increasing interest in cricket from young black boys and girls can largely ascribed to the work he did.

I was fortunate to have known Khaya Majola quite well. His son Vukile, who we knew as Eric, went to Highlands North Boys’ High before the family moved to Boksburg and he was a very good centre in the junior rugby team I coached.

Khaya was at every game we played that year, and many of the practices. He was friendly and generous with his time and advice. After that, I would see him at the Coca-Cola Week each year, and also from time to time at club cricket games in Joburg because, and it’s not widely known, Khaya was also the coach of the Soweto Cricket club.

His role there was very significant, and topical, as the cricket transformation debate rages on. I spoke with him about it on several occasions and he was convinced that the way to keep promising black cricketers involved in the game beyond school was to create opportunities for them to play as a team of their own, in their own environment, not as the odd black player in the predominately white clubs of Northern Joburg.

His death, at just 47, was tragic on so many levels, not the least of being that cricket was robbed of a man who was clearly destined to play a major leadership role in the game later on. Cricket South Africa, I would wager, wouldn’t be in the mess that it’s in these days if Khaya Majola was still around. 

 

 

Standout memories from 40 years in school sport

The effective closedown of school sport during this Covid mess gave me the opportunity to trawl my memory and write down some of the things that have stood out for me during my lifetime of school sport. Some people have been kind enough to suggest that I collect them into a book. I've done that now, but I don't really know where to go next - I don't think it's something worth publishing, really, but I do think there are those who, like me, have a deep interest in sport as part of the educational process and who would like to read some of it.

So, until I decide what to do with it, I'm going to put a few bits and pieces up here and see what the reaction is.

Here's a chapter on some special memories.    

LOOKING back on my 40 years of involvement in school sport, there are some events and occasions that have faded into sketchy recollection. There were others, however, that were so extraordinary that they remain sharply etched in my memory. Part of my of my motivation for writing this book has been to get those things down on paper before they too disappear from my consciousness. 

Here are some that stand out from them:

1 Lee Barnard 

I’m sometimes asked what the best school rugby game I’ve seen was, and my answer is one from a time before I was a sports reporter, from before I was even a teacher.

I was on the No.10 bus going down Louis Botha Avenue on the way to my Orange Grove home from varsity one Monday afternoon in 1973 and I got off in Yeoville because there was obviously something going on at King Edward VII School.

It turned out to be their last rugby game of the season (and, I found out, they were still unbeaten at that stage). The opponents were Union High from Graaf-Reniet, who they played regularly in those days. Union were leading handily when I arrived, close to half time.

KES played downhill on their notoriously sloping field in the second half, and as far as I can remember they clawed their way back to be two or three points down, in injury-time, in the near dark, with their unbeaten record under serious threat.

Their flyhalf that day was skinny buck-toothed kid called Lee Barnard. He had been passing the ball along unselfishly all game and was hardly noticeable. Then, with time elapsed, for the first time in the game he went on a break, he threw two outrageous dummy scissors passes, and crossed over under the posts, untouched.

That day will be remembered forever at KES because Barnard’s action secured an unbeaten season for them. I will remember it because it was the day that I fell in love with schoolboy rugby.

2 The Paarl Derby

There is nothing quite like the Paarl Boys’ High vs Paarl Gimnasium rugby derby. First National Bank – the game was one of the FNB Classic Clashes then – flew me down there one year to experience it for myself, and it’s something I’ll never forget.

I went down a day in advance and got to feel some of the fever that infects the town for the entire week leading up to the Saturday afternoon 1^st team rugby game. The whole place is either two shades of blue or green and maroon, even the trees are bandaged in the colours of the respective schools. And there is no neutrality. Everyone declares their allegiance loud and clear, except for some of the retailers who don’t want to alienate their customers, and who festoon their doorways and their window displays in the colours of both schools.

It’s not just about the rugby games either. It’s a full on interschools week featuring golf, chess, hockey for boys and girls and netball for girls. Paarl Girls’ High joins in to play against the girls of the co-ed Paarl Gimnasium. There are also old boys games and games between the respective primary schools. I was told when I was there that there are even tractor races on the local farms, with the machines painted appropriately. We were never able to confirm that, though so it may be apocryphal.

On the Saturday the top four under-19 rugby teams meet, culminating with the firsts at 4pm at the Faure Street Stadium in downtown Paarl. The stadium holds 25 000 and it’s always packed to the rafters. It is, I believe, the biggest crowd to watch a schoolboy rugby game, anywhere. If they moved it to Newlands, they could probably double the numbers. I don’t think the people of Paarl would allow that, though.

3 Benny’s Sports Academy

One icy winter’s morning I travelled with the excellent PR people from Intune Communications to Louis Trichardt in Limpopo province to visit Benny’s Sports Academy.

Intune were doing the publicity for the Danone Nations Cup, an under-12 international soccer tournament and Benny’s were the SA champions that year. We went to see their preparations ahead of going to the the world finals in Paris in a few weeks later.

Benny’s Sports Academy sounds like a 1^st world centre of development where talented kids get top coaching and off the field support, but it isn’t. It’s a little school in a village called Tshiozwi, one hour outside of Louis Trichardt, which is about as rural as you can get.

And yet there’s greatness there, achieved on a gravel football pitch, in classrooms built out of handmade bricks, and by children fed by women cooking on open fires under a thatched shelter.

The school runs from grade 0 to 12, so they have a high school too and their under-19 team, along with the under-12s have been Limpopo provincial champions five times. In the case of the under-19 tournament that means they have won a total of R500 000 in infrastructure funding over the years. The money has been put to good use in developing the educational facilities, including a spanky new hall where we were served a great lunch prepared by the same women who cook for the kids each day.

They are battling there. One of the purposes of the visit, I found out, was to take the players food to supplement their diet. Danone filled a trailer with their products – yoghurt, Jungle Oats, energy bars and fruit juice – and bought a couple of crates of eggs on the way, to hand over to the school.

So how come they shine so brightly? It’s impossible to know from a one-day visit, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t come down to leadership. The school, it seems, is a hybrid private-public one. It’s a combined school run by the state, which pays the salaries of a handful of teachers in a small school like that, and allocates the meagre other funding that all schools get. The sports academy side is owned by David Mufumadi (nickname: Benny), a Louis Trichardt furniture store manager who funds it largely out of his own pocket. The principal is Sindane Nqobile, and between them they clearly run a tight ship.

The coaches are teachers and the teachers are dedicated and hard-working (the matric pass rate is over 90%). It’s an inspiring story, and well worth getting up early on a chilly morning to see.

4 Put your jacket on

In my teaching days I was deeply involved in swimming and water polo administration and, because I still wanted to be part of it when I moved on to the newspaper, I used to volunteer in my early years to cover the SA National Aquatic Championships. It wasn’t part of my job, but even then management cost-cutting meant that the Independent group never assigned someone to go to them, so my sports editor agreed.

That’s how I found myself at the nationals in Pretoria one year, with accreditation that got me into the prize-giving dinner at the end of the week.

They stopped having those dinners later on, there were too many incidents involving under-age drinking and bad behaviour as the swimmers – most of whom were still at school – over-celebrated the release of the pressure they were under.

The dress code for the teams was “number ones”: provincial blazer and tie and, for those who had been awarded them, national colours. The function was held in the ‘skilpadsaal’ at the University of Pretoria, and it was hot in there that night. So, most of the swimmers has taken their blazers off and draped them over their chairs.

There were speeches and a long procession of trophies being handed over. I couldn’t help noticing that just about every recipient would go up jacketless. Their blazers remained on the backs of their chairs, even those fabulous green and gold ones that they had worked so hard for and which, I’m sure, they didn’t get much opportunity to wear.

Then a young man at the table next to ours was called up. He stood, straightened his tie, put his Northerns blazer on and buttoned it up before he walked to the stage. He passed right next to me when he returned to his seat and I couldn’t resist grabbing his arm and asking him, “what school are you at?” His reply was “Pretoria Boys’ High”.

I must have nodded quietly to myself. That sort of action was always insisted on at all the boys schools that I’d interacted with. The swimmer – I regret that I can’t recall his name – was at Pretoria but he could have been at any of the other institutions where attention to the little things is important – it’s one of the ingredients of their ongoing success stories.

I saw that night at Tukkies that it doesn’t happen everywhere.

5 Making some noise

In 1998 Jorg Hoffman a German international swimmer and former 400m and 1500m freestyle world record holder was in South Africa to swim in the Midmar Mile (which he won) and John Wright, an Australian swimming coach who worked in Joburg for a while and who was something of a showman, got him to attend the Girls Schools interhigh gala at Ellis Park while he was here.

He also arranged for him to race against the girls. It was an 800m freestyle race. Jorg on his own took on a 16 x 50m relay team made up of the two fastest swimmers from each of the eight schools who were there.

The girls interhigh at Ellis Park was, in those days, the noisiest event in Joburg sport. The schools bring an allocation of spectators – there isn’t enough room for all – and they pack them in like sardines. The city council even used to bring temporary stands in from their other pools and fields to increase the capacity.

And those girls scream, as only they can do, non-stop for the entire morning. That’s in a normal year, you can imagine the decibel level during that Jorge vs the girls of Joburg race.

Hoffman was a bit of a showman himself, it turned out. He would slow down in the middle of each leg, allowing the schoolgirl to pass him and then put his head down and catch her at the end of the length. His tumble turns were stylised displays, he’d arch his legs theatrically at the wall and glide the first 10 or 15m of the next length, then repeat his cat and mouse game, every time.

The anchor leg for that 16-girl team was swum by a girl from St Mary’s. Her name was Joanne Shuttleworth and she was a proper swimmer. She had been a South African champion through the age groups and had already represented her province at senior national level. Jorg gave her his customary start at the beginning of that final leg while he did his dramatic turn and glide and, when he looked up she was halfway down the pool already!

He clearly realised he was in trouble and had to put in 100% to catch her. He did that right at the wall and the electronic timing device showed that he had won by a few hundredths of a second. Imagine the noise during that final 50m.

It was the most exciting swimming race I have ever seen outside, of course, of that mens 4 X 100 relay at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

6 James Small

In around 1987 I took my Highlands North 1^st team to play against Greenside. The late James Small was their fullback and he had quite a reputation. He was the star of the co-ed schools athletics scene and had helped Greenside to a great rugby season that year.

So, we had tried to make plans to contain him. We never had to use them, to start with anyway. He never joined the backline, he kicked the ball back to where it came from whenever it came to him and, otherwise, he was practically invisible. We were leading quite comfortably halfway through the second half and I remember asking my co-coach, sarcastically, if James was actually playing that day.

Then, with 10 minutes to go, he suddenly woke up and went beserk. He began running at us and we couldn’t stop him. He scored two tries and laid on two more and a 10 point lead for us became a 20 point defeat in the wink of an eye. 

My players told me later that the Greenside boys said that sort of thing had happened before – it depended on whether James had had a rough night before the game. He was a troubled youth even then, it seems.

It was the most remarkable display on a rugby field that I had seen in my days as a coach. James made the Craven Week team and SA Schools later that year and went on to become one of our greatest Springbok wings. We got a brief glimpse of that greatness at Greenside that Saturday morning.

7 They’re only children

In my days as editor of the School Sport supplement of the Saturday Star I felt I needed to run a weekly column by a coach. I tried out a few and Lucky Stylianou, the former Kaizer Chiefs player and youth coach, who was teaching at Saheti School was the one that stuck.

It was a stroke of luck for us. For the next five years he sent us an article very week and it turned out he was far more than a good technical coach, he was deep thinker about the role of sport in the development of children. His columns got a great response from readers. I know he has gathered the best of them into a book that hasn’t been published yet, it really should be.

One of the women who worked with Lucky at Saheti told me once that the problem with him was that, like most Greek men, he saw himself as a direct successor to the ancient Greek philosophers and he looked at the world though that lens.

I don’t know about that, but I do know that he has a philosophical, long-game view on winning and losing that resonated with me perfectly.

It was an incident involving Lucky as a coach some years before, that was one of the events that stands out in my school sport memories. It was at a primary schools soccer tournament at Crawford College in Benrose. Lucky was there with the Saheti team.

The final, between two other schools, ended in a draw and was still deadlocked after extra time, so in the gathering gloom, it went into a penalty shot out, as the tournament regulations stipulated. At the end of two rounds of spot kicks the scores were still even so it went into a third. By then the 12 year-old players were so emotional and nervous that the first four kicks were missed, and the fifth one didn’t even reach the goalkeeper.

Those children were clearly overwhelmed. Then an incensed Lucky stepped up out of the crowd. He called the boys off the field and told the organisers that it was enough. He reminded them that these were only children and told them if they had to award a cup, the teams could share it, but there would be no more penalties taken that day. They, somewhat shame-faced, agreed. 

It was quite remarkable. I became a Lucky Stylianou fan that day and it had nothing to do with the fact that he had played 250 games for Kaizer Chiefs.

8 Bryce Parsons

Bryce Parsons is the latest of a long list of stars to come out of King Edward VII School. I watched Adam Blacher play for them, and Nic Pothas and Vaughn Van Jaaarsveld, Graeme Smith, Neil Mc Kenzie and Quinton de Kock.

KES has been consistently the top performing cricket school in Joburg over the 40 years that I’ve been involved. There are pretenders to that title but they have some way to go to match their track record.

Bryce achieved more than most of those stars did while still at school, but then again he had more opportunities. He played SA Schools, he was named the Khaya Majola Week player of the week and the South African under-19 player of the year in 2018 and captained the South African under-19 team on its tour to India and in the home ODI series against Pakistan in 2019.

Out of all his achievements one innings stands out for me. It was at the 2018 Khaya Majola Week in Cape Town when he made 129 not out, off 115 balls against Northerns, at Bishops. I watched it from beginning to end and it was clear that this was someone to watch. 

He struck 10 fours and four sixes and together with Jacob Miltz, his captain, who made 60, they got their side to 258/3 in their 50 overs, which was always going to be too much for Northerns, who were dismissed for 177. The win ensured a spot in the “main game’ of the week for Central Gauteng and it cemented a spot in the SA Schools team for Bryce. 

He was majestic and controlled, he fed the strike to Miltz who was the senior partner in the beginning, and then cut loose when Miltz went out. It was an individual display that is etched in my memory.

9 Kelsey White

The Joburg co-ed schools A league swimming interhigh gala was another of those noisy, spirit-filled occasions when it used to be staged at Ellis Park. The old pool with its concrete amphitheatre had an atmosphere that lent itself to that. At some stage the Joburg City Council priced itself out the market, and the pool was no longer kept in good condition, so the gala was moved to the Delville pool in Germiston, where it is still staged now. For me, it’s not the same anymore.

It was at Ellis Park, however, that I witnessed an achievement that sticks it my memory. It was the girls open 50m freestyle race and it was won by Kelsey White of Rand Park High School.

Kelsey went on to play water polo at the highest level and was the captain of the SA team for a number of years, including at the World Championships in 2015. She has come out of retirement and is currently in Japan as part of the SA water polo team. She is the 1^st team coach at St Mary’s School in Johannesburg.

In her time at Rand Park the school became, for a short period, the top girls water polo team in the land.

The co-ed interhigh, because it features boys and girls in all the age groups, and because the gala has to be completed in half a day,  consists mainly of 50m races in all the strokes.

That afternoon Kelsey lined up at the outside lane at Ellis – Rand Park wasn’t one of the fancied schools so they were pushed to the side – against a field that contained top provincial swimmers from Northcliff and Bryanston.

Just over half a minute later she had won the race and the stars in the centre lanes were staring up at the electronic timing scoreboard in disbelief. There was nothing stylish about her swim, it was sheer power, she took one breath in the middle of the pool and swam the last five metres head up, water polo style. 

Over two lengths, the thoroughbreds would have smoked her, but over 50m they were outpowered. It was glorious to see.

 

Are there really no good under-18 rugby players outside of the Western Cape and Bloemfontein?

There’s been a bit of a stir about the composition of the 45-man under-18 squad that was named by SA Rugby last week. The group will be cut to 35 and it will be departing for Georgia on July 31st. Although it has been stressed that this is not an official SA Schools or SA under-18 team, it will, never the less be playing three “internationals” against the hosts.

Clearly, these are not usual times. The 2020 and 2021 school rugby seasons both did get going, but were both shut down soon afterwards. There was no Craven Week, or Grant Khomo Week last year and there haven’t been any this year either – although SA Rugby haven’t given up entirely on that yet.

Under those circumstances, you have to ask why such a squad was chosen at all. And you have to acknowledge that whoever was tasked with making the selection had no chance of doing it properly.

The thinking, I guess, is that we cannot afford to go into 2022 without a group of recognised elite junior players to make up the pool out of which the provinces can do their recruiting and from which the SA under-20s to play in the next World Rugby U20 Championship will be chosen.

There is, it seems, a good rugby relationship between South Africa and Georgia at the moment. They agreed to playing Test matches against us to prepare for the Lions tour and their under-20s were recently involved in a tournament in Stellenbosch featuring Argentina and Uruguay as well. It’s logical that, if they came here, we should go there in return.

So, there are all sorts of good reasons why that junior squad should be chosen, and one very good reason why it should not have been – it hasn’t been done fairly.

 There are seven boys from Paarl Gimnasium there, and six from Grey College. No problem with that, of course our top two schools will feature prominently – it would be that way in any year. There are a further nine Western Province players in the group and three from Oakdale Landbou – so more than half of the squad are from Bloemfontein and the Western Cape province. They are all good players, I’m sure, and some of them have come through SA Rugby’s talented players programme.

There are two players from the Lions, and two from the Bulls, and smattering from the rest of the country. Again, I know it wasn’t easy to select the squad at a time when no-one’s playing and yes, the schools from the South smashed their woefully underprepared Northern counterparts at the preseason Monument and Affies festivals. But doesn’t that mean there are no good players north of Bloemfontein.

I don’t believe you can use those pre-season results as an absolute yardstick. I've been watching the Joburg Easter festivals, in particular, for 30-odd years and my observation has been that the teams that go into them without a few preparation games under their belts almost always come off second best.

Rugby is a team game - individual stars don’t mean much if the team as a whole is disjointed and doesn’t perform the unit skills effectively. In short, you cannot play your first games of the season against some of the top schools in the land without a few warmups beforehand. That’s what happened back in April.

The schools from the South will probably have ended the season with the better records, if there had been one. And Western Province may well have dominated the Craven week, like they almost always do, but that doesn’t justify choosing such a significant junior team from the schools around Cape Town, and from Grey College, and casting everyone else aside.

There’s no way you can expect success in the future if you only consider half the country when you identify for the first time the best players from this particular generation. More importantly, the players in every corner of the land deserve the same opportunities, That’s clearly not happened here.

If it could not have been done properly then perhaps it should not have been done at all.