Sport, these days, is entertainment and the laws of rugby,
in particular, are continuously being tweaked to make the game more appealing
to spectators, and to TV audiences.
And schoolboy rugby, I’d argue, is the most entertaining
form of the game – the numbers that turn up at school fields around the country
every Saturday bear that out. And now you can see most school games on TV too,
thanks to SupersportSchools.
There’s usually no room to spare at the big interschool
derby games, and there won’t be again this weekend at the Easter Rugby
Festivals. There are three in Joburg – at St Stithians, St John’s and King Eward
VII School – at a couple of others in other places.
The Standard Bank KES Festival is the youngest of the three
Highveld events, and it’s the 20th staging of it this year (it would
have been the 22nd is it were not for Covid). The first Saints Festival was in
1984, and St John’s started theirs in 1996.
They are a long-term success story and while there have been
some changes to them down the years, they have remained the same in principle,
based in their hearts on educational values.
I dug out one of the earliest programmes from the St
Stithians Festival and those values were articulated in it:
“The idea is to invite like-minded schools that share a
values-driven ethos and have a healthy attitude to sport. It is a festival of
rugby with no overall winner, no tournament team and no man of the match awards.
The idea was to match schools who don’t normally meet during the season, and as
far as possible, there will be no derby games and no repeat fixtures from year
to year.”
That’s still how it is. I’ve been fortunate to spend the
weekend at the KES Festival for the last few years, and I’ll be there again this
year. I was in the office there this week to pick up accreditation tags and I
heard those sorts of things spoken out aloud by the organisers. The values are never
deeply buried, despite the intense busyness that’s there in the leadup to the
event. It’s exactly the same at St John’s and St Stithians, I’d wager.
What goes on between the lines on the field, Adi Norris, the
director of the St John’s Festival once told me, has to remain exactly the same
for the players, year after year, and the hype and commerciality that surrounds
the event must never be allowed to interfere with that.
That’s exactly right. I know that’s what’s going to happen
at KES this year – for the 20th time – and I’m looking forward to
it.
KES have assembled an impressive lineup of schools to mark
their anniversary. They will only play two games each this year. That’s a
change, but a necessary one in the interests of the safety of the players,
given the incredible concentration of fixtures at this time of the year and the
number of games they are expected to play in a short period.
The 12 schools that played in the first KES festival in 2002
were: King Edward VII, Jeppe High School for Boys, Parktown Boys’ High School,
Queens College, Paarl Gimnasium, Durban High School, Affies, Pretoria Boys
High, Rondebosch Boys’ High, SACS, Selborne College, Wynberg Boys’ High.
Of those, KES, Jeppe, Parktown, Queens and Pretoria Boys
High are back.
Fixtures
Saturday
8am Hudson Park vs Queens
9.15am Northwood vs Brandwag
10.30am Bishops vs Dale
11.45am Ben Vorster vs Eldoraigne
1pm Pretoria Boys High vs Selborne
2.15pm Queens vs Jeppe
3.30pm KES vs Paarl Boys’ High
Monday
8am Ben Vorster vs Queens
9.15am Paarl Boys’ High vs Pretoria Boys High
10.30am Northwood vs Hudson Park
11.45am Eldoraigne vs Selborne
1pm Dale vs Parktown
2.15pm Jeppe vs Brandwag
3.3pm KES vs Bishops
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