Cricket's here - that's my highlight

 

Lots to choose from when deciding on a highlight of the week gone by.

The Boks hammering the All Blacks, of course – dare we hope? And that ovation for Siya Kolisi from the crowd.

The last gasp win by Rondebosch over Bishops in a Cape Town Southern suburbs derby that lived up to that description; watching KES and Jeppe draw 1-1 on the main rugby field at KES – and remembering that when we first tried to introduce football at Joburg schools, KES refused and, if the story’s correct, soccer balls were once totally banned on the so-called Reds field; Garsfontein’s Noordvaal trophy win over EG Jansen – their first since 2016 – with Monument winning the U14 and 15 finals and Helpmekaar the U16, showing that recruitment is alive and well the in Golden Lions Schools; and the news that Rand Park High came within four points of Northcliff at the Joburg co-ed schools athletics interhigh – seriously threatening that 26-year unbeaten run.

But, for me, it’s been the drawing of circles around the frost-bleached fields around town, ignoring the lanes marked out and the fading touch and try lines – cricket season is here. It’s been a long, cold winter and we felt this weekend that it isn’t over yet, but I have faith that come next Thursday, when 12 of the top schools descend on St David’s Marist Inanda, the weather will turn and we can settle down to a different kind of excitement.

And the St David’s Fasken festival is different. The teams play two games each, with two days set aside for each. It’s time cricket. Which means its not limited overs. The captains are expected to declare and set targets, if their side isn’t bowled out, just like in Test cricket.

This is the fourth time the format is being used – the man behind it is former provincial coach Dave Nosworthy – and the idea is to teach the boys a whole bunch of new skills, cricketing and other. I love the idea, and so do a lot of school coaches – there’s a waiting list of teams wanting to be invited.

So, the World Cup’s coming and rugby will be occupying our minds, but the great game – that’s what St David’s headmaster Mike Thiel calls it, seeing that football has appropriated the name the “beautiful game” – will be what I’ll be watching next weekend.

The fixtures for the St David’s Fasken Festival are:

 August 31 and September 1 - Jeppe vs Clifton (Gier Oval, St David’s), St David’s vs Maritzburg College (La Valla Oval, St David’s), Lions vs KES (Mc Gregor Oval, St David’s), St Stithians vs Waterkloof (Dlamini Oval, St Stithians), St John’s vs St Andrew’s (Baytop Oval, St Stithians), Paul Roos vs Noordheuwel (La Rosey Oval, St David’s).

September 2 and 3 – Jeppe vs Paul Roos (Gier Oval, St David’s), St David’s vs Lions (La Valla Oval, St David’s), KES vs Clifton (La Rosey Oval, St David’s), St Stithians vs St Andrew’s (Dlamini Oval, St Stithians), St John’s vs Maritzburg College (Mc Gregor Oval, St David’s), Noordheuwel vs Waterkloof (Baytop Oval, St Stithians).

The St David's festival was a good way to see the new season in

 

So, the 2023 winter schools sport season is over, and the quite spectacular St David’s Challenge Cup soccer tournament saw the new one in last weekend.

The standard of play, someone who knows the game far better that I do said, wasn’t as high as it has been in some years, but the sheer size of the thing, the number of boys involved, the number of games they played and the quality of the organisation: the fields, officiating, catering, and the updating of the tournament standings as we went along, were outstanding.

I’ve been to lots of these things over the years, including those run by Sasfa – the schools football association that was part of SAFA, until they were kicked out because of a dispute between the bodies over funding and sponsorship - and I’d say this was a good as it could possibly be.

The event doubled in size this year with the introduction of under-14 and under-16 sections, played at St Stithians. It was a separate tournament, although it is also called the Challenge Cup, and there is some co-ordination – the idea is that the participating schools will send teams to all four competitions, making it more of a mass participation event.

One significant difference, I thought, was that both the competitions at Saints were played as full on tournaments with cross pool playoffs, quarterfinals, semis and a final. At St David’s the U15 section was a festival. There was a division into a top eight and a bottom eight after the first rounds of games, but they then played another round-robin, with no consequences.

There was an under-15 winner at St David’s up until last year but it has been changed, I was told, on request from the headmasters of the boys schools, who don’t want U14s and 15s, who are still learning to play the game, to participate in any kind of league.

That’s why the U14 basketball and water polo tournaments that round off the 1^st term are festivals now, without winners. I’m not sure why the U14s at Saints played for a cup, they shouldn’t have.

That said, the Grade 8s, fresh out of primary school where football was the game they played, were given ample opportunity to keep on playing it – that hasn’t always been the case.

So, it’s football for the next few weeks, with the cricketers already starting to loosen up – I’ll be back at St David’s in two weeks time for the excellent Fasken Two-Day Festival, more about that later.

What we won’t be seeing is school athletics, not at the boys schools anyway. I find it strange and uncharacteristic that they seem to have capitulated on that one. I’m sure they have their reasons and I know the really serious athletes compete in more structured competitions in the first term now. But what about the others?

My experience is that there are those who aren’t much good at some of the events, but who bust a gut at them anyway. I’m going to miss watching that stoutly-built youngster who doesn’t belong anywhere near the 1500m, giving it his all to finish and earn a point for his school. And to hear the applause he gets when he comes down the straight a minute behind the winner. There used to be lessons taught and learnt that way too.

The St David's semifinalists are a fascinating mix

 

There’s an interesting mix of schools playing in the semifinals of the St David’s Marist Inanda Challenge Cup Soccer tournament today.

By the time you read this the games will probably have been played, but they featured Norkem Park vs Brebnor High School in the one, and King Edward VII School vs St Stithians College in the other.

Two who, by the standards that most of us measure sporting schools by, are not well-known, and two who have produced top teams and provincial and international players aplenty in a range of sporting codes for many years.

It’s a reflection, in the first place of the egalitarian nature of football. You don’t need a million dollar facility to play the game, nor do you need expensive equipment or fancy kit. It’s what makes it the “world game”. Although, clearly, neither Brebnor nor Norkem got to the standard that we saw at St David’s this weekend by playing pick-up games in the veld somewhere. Norkem Park are regulars at the tournament, and perennial achievers, while Brebnor are here for the first time, but they came with quite a reputation, and its well deserved.

KES and St Stithians have long and proud sporting traditions, and they offer just about every sporting activity under the sun to their learners. They both had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Joburg schools football setup. There was a referendum among the boys at KES in the 1990s, the story goes about whether they wanted to play soccer or rugby and soccer won. The result was buried by the authorities who were hoping to use it to keep soccer out of the school! St Stithians were reluctant participants at first, mainly because the difference in term dates between state and private schools made it difficult to fit a season in.

Well, they are certainly both in it now, and they do have the facilities and equipment required to run top-class programmes. KES, simply, takes everything they do seriously, and St Stithians have put a lot of time and effort into soccer as an area where they have the potential to differentiate themselves.

Those trying to make sense of the absurd situation of South African soccer being where it is on the international rankings, despite having possibly the best league on the continent and certainly the best facilities, often blame it on the fact that our so-called top schools are rugby institutions, where the boys are not allowed to practice the round ball code.

They are wrong. Soccer is, of course, played at the vast majority of schools across the land, and thanks to schools like St David’s who go to the trouble to put on events like the Challenge Cup, almost all of the so-called rugby schools also have excellent football programmes too.

So, the problem is not one of access to the game, it’s one of not optimally using the school system as the major developmental nursery the way that the other sporting codes, like rugby, do.

I never saw a Safa official or a scout from one of the professional clubs at St David’s this weekend. They should be here – there are players in those four semi-finalist teams that they should be taking a look at. And they aren’t the only ones in action in Inanda this weekend.

 

Back at the place where it all began

 

The last few schools rugby matches are being played this weekend, but there’s no doubt that the first weekend of August, in Joburg, belongs to the beautiful game.

It’s St David’s Marist Inanda Soccer Challenge Cup time – it’s been that way since 2003. I was at the opening day on Friday and it occurred to me that the 576 boys in action there probably had no appreciation for the role that St David’s has played in making football the growing school sport that it is.

When Shane Gaffney, director of sport at St David’s at the time, first had the idea of a tournament like this part of the idea was to kick-start the game in the boys schools in Joburg. Football in the third term was only beginning to take root and it was mainly the Model C co-ed schools who participated, along with St David’s and Highlands North. The boys schools, until then were fiercely resisting the idea of introducing the game at their rugby-obsessed schools, but when they saw a well-run tournament, based on sound educational principles was in place and that it was attracting some of the elite schools from around the country, they had to join in. Eventually they all gave in to the demand for the game in their communities.

Because a third term season is so short, squeezed in between summer and winter, a tournament makes sense. Each team will play six games over the three days at St David’s, and they are full-length matches. Most of the schools will play three or four tournaments of this kind in the season and the upshot is that, far from a brief “after-thought” of a season, the 1^st football team will typically play more matches than the 1^st rugby team will.

It was a U19 tournament at first, U15 teams were added in 2009, and this year there are U14s and U16s too, playing at St Stithians. That makes it a massive undertaking. There are 32 teams at each venue and a total of 96 matches will be played at each over the three days. And it runs like a well-oiled machine. Brad Ireland, St David’s sport director is the organiser and right next to him all the time in Franco Gilardi, who has been involved since 2007. Between them, they have pretty much nailed the model, although they do tweak it a little every year. “We extended the U-19 games to 35 minutes a side this year, for example, and we are considering brining in rolling substitutions from next year, Ireland said.

It’s an undoubted success story, and it was St David’s that started it all. Football is growing as a school sport, in numbers and quality. If it were not for the vision on Shane Gaffney and the dedication of Brad Ireland, Franco Gilardi and the people who have kept the tournament going, it would never have happened.

The beautiful game kicks off this weekend. It’s been great watching it happen.

Saints double makes schools hockey history

 

My sporting highlight of the week? ………….

The St Stithians Girls College won the Pullen Cup tournament, the premier local girls hockey knockout competition, beating Noordheuwel in the final last Saturday.

The Pullen Cup is named after Rob Pullen, a former South African international player and national mens coach. He was director of sport at St Andrew’s Girls’ School when, in 2006, it was decided by the organisers of girls hockey that they needed the equivalent of the Aitken Cup – the long-standing boys hockey knockout tournament – as well as a junior competition similar to the U15 boys Boden Trophy. So, they introduced an U19 and an U16 tournament and named them after Rob Pullen and Ros Howell, who was the head of hockey at St Mary’s at the time and, like Pullen, a former national player and national senior team coach.

The interesting thing is that, this year, St Stithians won both U19 competitions. It’s the first time that’s happened. The Boys College won the Aitken Cup back in May when they beat Jeppe, in a one-on-one shootout after clawing their way back from 2-0 down to level matters with seconds remaining in normal time. It was my highlight of the week back then, and I remember noting that there can be fewer things in sport more dramatic than the eight-second contests between shooter and ‘keeper that are used as a tie-breaker in hockey these days.

The Pullen and Aitken tournaments have, in recent years been dominated by two schools. St Mary’s won the girls title eight times out of the 16 it has been played, and were the defending champions going into this year’s edition. Jeppe have won the Aitken Cup more times than anyone else and they had six consecutive titles under their belts when Saints stopped their run this year.

I’ve always found victories by the underdogs stirring so, while I know that long term winners don’t set up those records by chance – it’s usually because they work harder than anyone else – it’s great, as an outsider, to watch newcomers go into the contest with no respect for the history and a fierce determination to make their own. 

St Stithians did that this year, twice. It sets things up nicely for next year. Will those former champions bounce back, or are we seeing the start of a new dynasty? We are lucky to have schools so closely matched in Joburg schools sport. It’s what has kept me a keen follower of it for all these years.

Roll on 2024.