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 the 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.