Be kind when you play a weaker school - they are important to you

Here’s something I’ve been going on about for a long time – no school rugby game should ever be allowed to get to a score of 114-0!

It happened in an U14B game on Saturday. What would have happened is that the winning team scored their 1^st try directly from the first kick-off, followed by another from the next and the next – for the entire game. There might have been a few seconds here and there when the losers did have possession and tried to do something but they would have been smashed by the defence.

I’m not making it up. I’ve seen it happen. The weaker team has no way of slowing down the scoring, and someone, apparently, carefully keeps the tally. It’s an abomination and none of the adults who were there while it was happening should be allowed anywhere near a rugby field where kids are playing ever again, starting with the referee. They can’t be trusted to have the interests of the children at heart, and I would encourage the parents not to allow their children to play rugby again when they are around.

Once it becomes clear that one of the teams cannot defend itself, the game should be stopped, and I don’t care if it’s still in the first half. The point has been made, the lesson has been learnt and it doesn’t do anyone any good to let it go on.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s consider how such mismatches happen. The principle of strength vs strength is a cornerstone of sport. It clearly wasn’t applied here. Why? Because school sport isn’t about winning and losing. Fixtures between schools are about community. They have to do with traditional relationships, with giving players an opportunity to play against those who may have been in primary school with, about laying the foundations for lasting friendships and associations later in life.

In the past, before elite schools emerged, all the schools in the community played each other - you stayed in your own town, mainly, and your fixture list stayed the same, year after year. Not anymore. Some schools invest heavily in their rugby programmes and they do many of things that happen in professional rugby. Other schools cannot do that, they fall behind, and the talented players don’t attend them – and if they do, they are soon lured away.

So, as an elite rugby school, there’s increasingly no-one to play against in your town and the traditional rugby fixture list has turned into a schedule of festivals and out of town tours. The danger is that you will eventually only play those sorts of games. Look at Grey College. There are no Bloemfontein schools they play against anymore.

That means you don’t have a community of opponents. You play in some sort of super league and you have no other meaningful contact with the schools you play against. Against that background, you find that those fixtures against local opponents that do survive become special and should be handled very carefully.

Once you have decided that it’s important to continue the fixture, you, as the stronger school. have to make it worthwhile for your opponents. The management of these contests is different to your games against your super league opponents.

Here’s what I think. The objective is that you want the management of the other school to say: “We lost just about every game, and the 1^st team got a hiding, but that was a good fixture, we’ll be back again next year.”

For them to do that, you have to be kind. A wise colleague pointed out when I was espousing these views to her, that you have to be kind in everything you do, as a school. Who can argue with that? Certainly you have to be kind to your opponents on match day. Save your hard-nosed and aggressive attitudes for the schools that are challenging your position in the rankings.

Play to win – it would be an insult to the opponents if you didn’t – but show a little empathy. And it won’t be a slight on your prowess if you show some mercy. Don’t put the boot in when your man is down, and tell your coaches and referees to stop the game when the score gets out of hand.

And, of course, there is no room for bullying or arrogance – not from coaches, players or spectators.

Be unfailingly polite and respectful. You have a better rugby programme and better players, that doesn’t make you better people.

Tell the other school how important they are to you (because they are) and how much you appreciate them. Maybe then they’ll want to come back next year.

And blow the runaway games short!

 

 

There is so much more to a school than 1st team rugby

I saw a post the other day calling on the big rugby schools to professionalise their social media offerings so that they can make the most of the opportunities that the enormous interest that their 1^st team matches generate.

Schools rugby is described in it as a Billion Rand Industry so, I guess, the idea is that the schools should be getting their share of that. While it’s true that people are making money out of it – the guy who wrote the article and who operates in the world of online marketing wants to be one of them, I assume – and the schools aren’t getting their due share, I find the whole notion quite appalling.

I threw my two cents worth in on it when there was a workshop on the commercialisation of school sport and the same principle is being ignored here – it’s not the role of sport at school to be part of an income stream. Sport is part of the educational process and how it is run at a school has to be educationally accountable, just like everything else that happens in the school’s name.

There are all sorts of things, in my opinion, that are wrong with the way schools pursue 1^st team rugby success and to add the need to have the 1^st team perform because it will cost the school money if it doesn’t to the pressures on the boys is so horrific I don’t even know where to start on it (as I said before).

And now the suggestion is that schools have to up their social media coverage of their rugby programme. Given the massive amounts of money already spent on rugby programmes, how do you account for spending even more on an outsourced rugby social media presence?

These days, as retirement jobs, I run the social media coverage at one school, and I supply sports content at another. The LinkedIn piece called for nominations of the best schools rugby socials and we don’t come anywhere near. That’s because we don’t focus on rugby. Everything in a school has to be educationally accountable, remember. What about all the other boys, coaches, parents? The ones who work very hard at activities that aren’t 1^st team rugby.

Neither of those schools are rugby institutes and neither will allow rugby to dominate its content. At St John’s, where the marketing department works for five different schools – College, Prep, Pre-primary, Kindergarten and Fifth Form College – I have to wait my turn to get any kind of sport onto the feed.

At Jeppe we feature rugby when it’s happening, but there is so much more to the school than rugby. I had a look at what we featured in the last month. There was rugby vs Westville and of course the Wildeklawer Festival. But also loads of hockey, culminating in the Hibbert Shield and Alan Monk tournaments; then there posts on the Angling Club, including the announcement of a national selection; debating competitions; the pipe band going to the Amanzimtoti Highland Gathering; Freedom Day celebrations; a blood transfusion day; the 4^th hockey team having tea with the headmaster; a cricketer who allocated the cricket net he has given as a prize to his old primary school; and some feedback on building projects that the old boys association is busy with.

Good luck to any outsourced agency that tries to get a handle on all of those. But they are the fabric of the school. Our posts won’t win any design prizes, and there’s no earnings potential there, but we are a community not a rugby union or club. Tell them to hire the pros to do their socials and let the boys play.

 

My highlight of the weekend ... the Alan Monk

 

School sport in our neck of the woods took a bit of a breather as many took the opportunity provided by a three-day week to have a rare weekend off.

Not everyone though. Parktown staged its Alan Monk U16 tournament from Thursday to Sunday – it was the only gap for it in the middle of the all the frenetic activity, with the Aitken-Boden weekend coming up soon as well.

There’s a school sport highlight right there. Those teachers, most of whom never had an April holiday – there were tours and festivals everywhere – were happy and enthusiastic about working some more while everyone else had a break, because giving the U16s a taste of tournament play is that important to them. Anyway, I was there too. I didn’t need a break though, I always say the best things about retirement are the hours, and the length of the working week!

And I’m so glad I went. I don’t know much about hockey but I can recognise (and I’m a big fan of) passion and commitment. There was plenty of that, from players, coaches, and those who were running the event. It went a bit too far once or twice, I thought, but if the adults in the room used that to teach the boys the lessons that these sorts of event are all about, then goals were attained.

Affies and Pretoria Boys High were there, and St Alban’s were there last year. I asked about that, because I recall that the idea was to have an abbreviated Boden/Aitken competition, at the same time, involving the top 10 U16 teams in the S Gauteng Province. I was told that isn’t so. It’s Parktown’s tournament and they can invite who they like. Apparently, they are looking to involve teams from KZN and elsewhere from next year on too.

That’s fine. I love tradition, but sometimes it gets in the way. In this case, the boys at this age need a taste of what’s to come in the future, and that includes playing six games against top opposition. It would be sad, though, if the local sides that have been supporting the event for years have to make way for the big guns. They could use another field I guess; they did that this year. But I love the Parktown  setting with its towering oak trees and rustic stone seating, in the middle of the concrete jungle. The boys need to experience playing there.

An added bonus, for me, was that the final featured the two schools where I have some involvement. I was there to report on the progress of St John’s and Jeppe over the four days, and they both went all the way. For once I could really say that it didn’t matter who won. In the end it was Jeppe, but they were made to fight for it by a brave and resolute St John’s outfit who have some very skilful players. More importantly, the biggest game of the weekend saw less of the niggly play and bad attitudes from the players than some of the earlier ones I watched.

And at the end of the prize-giving proceedings, the teams were given a couple of boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts each by a St John’s parent and – they are teenagers after all – they wolfed them down on the spot!

I drove home with a warm feeling, beaming with pride at both “my” schools, and very impressed with the show that Parktown put on.

Highlights, for sure.