Two things that make our schools rugby great

 

I was invited during the week to a briefing to mark the launch of the 2024 SDC Noordvaal Cup tournament. I went along because I saw that Swys de Bruin would be part of a panel discussion and was interested to hear what he had to say and because I knew I’d see some old friends there.

Swys said all the right things about reducing the pressure on schoolboy rugby players and getting them to play for the enjoyment of the game, although I fear he was preaching to the wrong congregation – in my experience this competition, and its forbears, epitomises the importance of winning like nothing else I’ve seen.

The tournament was called, several times, the biggest in South Africa and, possibly the biggest in the world. In my days as a reporter, I learnt never to say things like that. Whenever I did, I would be called out pretty smartly to be told of something else that was older, or bigger, or whatever.

I don’t know what they mean by “biggest”. If its about the highest number of schools, and teams, playing in a single, unified competition over a number of weeks culminating in day in which the finals of all four divisions are played under the same banner, it might well be that there is nothing quite like it anywhere else.

If you are measuring big by the number of matches and players involved, however, I’ve argued in the past that there’s nothing to match a Saturday morning in the non-league, “friendly”, schools rugby season. Take this weekend, and the independent schools are on holiday, remember. There will be 21 rugby matches at Jeppe, where Westville Boys’ High are the visitors; Pretoria Boys’ High are travelling to Maritzburg College with 25 rugby teams; and there will be 27 games at Parktown, where KES are the visitors, over Friday and Saturday.

That Parktown fixture is interesting. KES have way more teams that they do, so Springs’ Boys High are also involved and the sides are matched up so that every KES team gets a game on the day. Last Saturday Rand Park filled in simiarly at Jeppe vs St Stithians, and later in the season Northcliff will help out in Jeppe’s games against St John’s.

That’s 74 games at three venues this weekend. On a full match day in the Noordvaal competition, there will be 17 fixtures and assuming that each school fields eight teams (which definitely won’t happen in the lower divisions) that adds up to 136 games. When the private schools get back, and if you add in the fixtures at the smaller Joburg schools, and at those in Durban, Cape Town and the Eastern Cape, you will see that the numbers don’t compare.

That’s not to say that the Noordvaal Cup is not a great tournament. It provides regular competition to 37 schools and their games are played in conditions that meet professional standards. And there's no doubt that the highly competitive nature of the competition, and the pressure that involves, makes for the development of very good players. Those are the sorts of things that people are talking about when they say our schools rugby system in the best in the world.

And side by side with that, we have this huge mass participation, non-league setup that, by the way, is largely demographically transformed.

I’m excited about this weekend’s Jeppe vs Westville exchange – it will involve over 1000 boys in all sorts of codes and activities – and I can’t wait, too, for April 20 when the Noordvaal Cup kicks off with Helpmekaar vs Monument, a pretty tasty matchup to get things rolling.