My sporting highlight of the weekend - it's Saints again

 

My sporting highlight of the weekend? ….. Amazingly, it’s St Stithians related for the third week in a row. Lhuan-Dre Pretorius’ 153 runs, on debut, for the senior mens side against Zimbabwe.

He never matriculated at Saints – he left at the beginning of grade 12 to go into home schooling – but he was there from grades 8 to 11 and was already in the SA U9 team by then. He is a cricket wizard. I remember him as a schoolboy scoring runs as effortlessly as he did on Saturday; he kept wicket for the Central Gauteng Lions at his last Khaya Majola Week; and I watched him bowling left-arm spin once – and taking lots of wickets for very few runs.

I like, sometimes, when a new bright star appears on the horizon, to recall him or her playing as a schoolkid and wonder if we saw what was coming. Lhuan-Dre was a no-brainer.

Another ex-Saints boy announced himself on Saturday – Asenathi Ntlabakanye. He certainly made an impression as a schoolboy rugby player, I remember writing of his astonishing ability to play all 70 minutes of a game and finish as one of the strongest players on the field, despite his bulk. I never pegged him as a future Springbok back then, however, because he just didn’t fit the body mould. But we never imagined Rassie Erasmus and his ability to pick the right players, and his re-invention of the game. Seeing Asenathi in the first two scrums against the Barbarians was a sight to remember.

I was once taken to task for referring to St Stithians as our top cricketing nursery. It was pointed out to me that a school closer to the centre of town had actually won most of the games in their fixture that year. I do believe, however, that a measure of success for a school sports programme is the number of players who kick on and play at a higher level after school.

Consider that Ryan Rickleton and Kagiso Rabada have been rested for the current Test series, but there are still three Saints old boys in the team: Wiaan Mulder, Pretorius and Kwena Maphaka!

Pink Derby day means more

 

My sporting highlight of the weekend? …. I did enjoy watching the Pumas beat the self-proclaimed wonders of the rugby world on Friday night, but at the risk of looking like I’m on the St Stithians payroll, it has to be the Pink Derby on Saturday.

I have to disclose that I got a personal invitation from the ebullient Annie Fyfe-Hitchings to go to Saints to watch the game, and that I confirmed for myself that you’d battle to find better food for the guests in the clubhouse than what they lay on there.

It was the 8^th staging of the Pink Derby – a collaboration between St Stithians and St John’s, promoting awareness of, and raising funds for, the scourge of breast cancer. I was at the 1^st one, I think – at St John’s – and the concept has really taken off since then. It was a production on Saturday of the type that Saints is well-known for, and it the house was packed.

St Stithians vs St John’s is a proper rugby derby – between close neighbouring schools who are alike in just about every way. Except for an important one – St John’s is the 2^nd oldest school in town; St Stithians was founded in 1953. It’s old school tradition vs the upstarts. That has added some spice to the contest, on the stands anyway, down the years.

On the day however it’s us, this year vs them, this year, and on paper St Stithians were heavily favoured. They duly won, but only after St John’s mounted a stirring second half comeback to turn a 22-0 halftime score into a one-point deficit. The hosts’ only second half points came from a last minute penalty to make the game safe.

It was a thriller, well worth the trip for me. And afterwards, while quaffing the great snacks up in the pavilion, I got to have a catch up with a number of old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen for years. I’d hoped that would happen. In truth, that’s why I went there in the first place.

It was a great occasion, and a good game, on a day that meant more.

Two significant schools rugby games, and a pretty good innings, this weekend

Picture: Kearsney College Facebook

 

My sporting highlight of the weekend? ….

Aiden Markram, obviously, and the Jacques Nienaber defence. But closer to home – thanks to the magic that is SuperSport Schools – two remarkable schools rugby matches on Saturday, at Kearsney and at Kingswood College, where St Stithians and St Andrew’s were the guests.

They were both nail-biters, both won with the final move of the game by the team that was behind. Actually the Kearsney game was restarted after they took the lead, once the ref had cleared the field of spectators, but they managed the kick off, and that was that.

Kearsney beat St Stithians 26-25 after Saints had been ahead for all of the game. It was gutting for the Joburg team but, for me, it was a fantastic achievement by them. Saints have had their best season in a while. They are sitting on 60% wins and their losses – to Parktown, St Alban’s, Pretoria Boys High and, now, Kearsney have all been close.

I, and others who believe in the importance of school rugby as part of the education of the young people in our community, have been worried about St Stithians. They stopped playing KES and Jeppe a few years ago now – quite understandably – and in the case of quite a few other schools who did that, the next step has been that they cease to exist as a competitive force playing at a decent level.

Clearly there are people at St Stithians who refuse to allow that to happen. Their teams are being well coached, the club is being well led and the boys have responded in the way you’d expect boys at a school with a proud tradition to do.

A win on Saturday would have been a fine way to make the point. It didn’t happen, but for me it was heart-warming on a cold day none-the-less.

The other game I watched was the K Day derby – Kingswood vs St Andrew’s in Makhanda. I’ve been to most of the significant interschool matches down the years, but I’ve never been to that one. Thanks to SuperSport School, I was able to get a taste of it. I’ve been told that K Day rivals the Paarl derby in the way it divides a town in two and that, if either of the schools had the seating capacity, the crowd at it would not be much smaller.

The two TV commentators were associated with the respective schools in some way, so they had real knowledge about the players, and the occasion. They were eloquent and interesting. It really made you feel you were there, a little bit.

The result went my way, I confess. I spent some time at St Andrew’s for the Khaya Majola Week a few years ago and the people there are just so nice. I’ve also not got over my disapproval of Kingswood after reading that Makhanda’s other school, Graeme College, had broken off all ties with them when they lured some of their talented players away with bursaries and promises.

You know how I feel about that.

 

Provincial schools selections - a complicated matter

 

The Golden Lions schools rugby teams that will be going to SA Rugby’s Youth Weeks in the holidays have been announced.

There are 115 players in the five teams chosen – U18 Craven Week, U18 Academy Week, U17 Welpies, U6 Grant Khomo Week and U16 Welpies – and 90 of them come from five schools. Noordheuwel has the most with 22, there are 19 each from KES and Jeppe, 17 from Helpmekaar and 13 from Monument.

The other 25 players come from a further seven schools, with Parktown (seven) and Marais Viljoen (four) providing the most.

There’s nothing very unusual about that distribution, although Monument usually dominates the selections and hasn’t done so this year. That’s going to raise some eyebrows, as are the high numbers coming through from KES and Jeppe.

In the Craven Week team, there are seven players from Helpmekaar, six each from Jeppe and Noordheuwel, three from KES and one from Monumnet.

KES, at 1^st team level, beat both Noordheuwel and Helpmekaar this year; Jeppe lost to Noordheuwel and to Monument. The relative representation from those schools in the Craven Week team doesn’t reflect that. Not that it should, necessarily - we know there can be great players in weak teams – but the reality is that the racial quota requirements in place go in the favour of the schools with higher numbers of quality black players in their teams. Noordheuwel had two players of colour in their ranks when they played Jeppe earlier this season, Helpmekaar had none against KES last week. KES and Jeppe, and Parktown, have a majority of players of colour in their teams and, although those teams haven’t been too consistent this year, they have produced results indicating that those boys can play.

In case you are wondering just how the quota system affects selection, here’s an explanation given to me by a Craven Week coach a few years ago (at the time that the requirement of 11 black players was increased to 12 – more than 50% of the team):

Every 23-man squad, at all the Youth Weeks, has to have at least 12 players of colour in its ranks. By the end of the second round of fixtures, every player must have played a full game, with everyone getting a chance to start a match.

Those arrangements aren’t there simply to give everyone a game. They are designed to prevent the coaches from taking a “first choice XV and group of reserves” approach. The reasons are obvious. There’s a perception that some provinces will pick their 12 reserves and use them only as replacements while the 11 first choice boys will play all the time.

There's a veiled accusation of racism in that, probably justified in some cases. It has, however, changed the dynamics of team selection and match day lineups drastically.

Eight of the first day’s starting lineup have to sit out the second game, which means that you have to, in effect, chose two separate teams.

You pair players, the coach explained – when A sits out, he will be replaced by B, hopefully without weakening the team, and so on. That changes things. You no longer pick the best 23 overall; your selection has to take the “two team” reality into consideration.

In rugby, everywhere else in the world, you select your bench to cover positions in case of injury, or to provide impact late in the game. Not at SA Rugby’s Youth Weeks. There the coaches are not allowed to make tactical substitutions in the first game, and in the second outing only the seven players who played on day one can be substituted, unless there are injuries.

Given the way rugby has developed around the world, we are asking our Craven Week coaches to manage a different game to that which has evolved, world-wide, in recent years.

That’s the reality behind the numbers. The schools that have embraced transformation and are developing black players in numbers will have the most representatives. Star players of colour recruited by others will be there too.

Once that exercise is completed the selectors can look at the white players and try to find a balance that will give the team the best chance of success. It hasn’t been an objectively fair process for a long time and it’s unlikely that it ever will be again.

That’s why the festivals involving all the players from the elite schools, like Noord-Suid and Wildeklawer have gained in popularity, and relevance.

I’ll be rooting for the Golden Lions at the Craven Week. I hope they’ve got the selections right this time. It will make a nice change if they have.

Jeppe scrapped, but Affies rugby is on a different planet

 

My school sport highlight of the weekend?

It has to be Jeppe vs Affies. You can’t but be awed by the quality and effectiveness of the Affies sporting programme. 

Jeppe won the 1^st team hockey game quite handily on Saturday, but this is an exceptional Jeppe team. I know their hockey people were nervous going into the day. They scraped a draw at 1^st team level in Pretoria last year on a day when they lost more matches than they won, and this year Jeppe lost five and drew one of the 15 games – there haven’t been many schools that have done that to them this year.

Affies rugby is on a different planet. They won every game on Saturday, as they did at KES last weekend, and against Jeppe the last three years in row. Their strength in depth is quite amazing. The lower age group games were played on a stagger, Jeppe Cs vs Affies Ds or Es, for example, yet the Jeppe teams were still all beaten comprehensively.

Their available talent is dazzling – there are players in their Cs and Ds that will walk into the A teams at most schools. And they are well coached. They do the basics well, don’t make mistakes and stick to the game plan with total discipline. None of that happens without good coaching, and hours of practice.

Clearly, they do that at Affies and they deserve the results they get.

That said, Jeppe have shown before, that you shouldn’t underestimate a scrapper with a point to prove. Their 1^st team has played some big names this year and those teams came away knowing they had been in a game. We were expecting more of the same, and they sure delivered.

In fact, they came within a whisker of delivering another Grey College-sized upset. Affies slotted a penalty deep into extra time to clinch a two-point win. Jeppe tackled like demons, stopped the much-celebrated Affies maul, more than once, and scored a couple of scintillating tries.

The Affies team must have been shocked. It didn’t go according to the pre-game plan, or as the rest of the day would have suggested. Yet they were as determined not to lose as Jeppe was to win, and at the end their kicker showed enormous nerve to kick the penalty to win it.

There was no fairytale ending, but it was a fabulous game. Watching that, and seeing for myself throughout the day what they mean when people say the secret to SA rugby’s success lies in its great rugby schools, was the highest of highlights for me.