Have the selection goal posts moved?

 

The coaching staff of the Eastern Province Grant Khomo Week team were being a little disingenuous when they threatened to resign, en masse, over the changes made by the EP Rugby Union to the team that was selected after the trials process.

I’ve read since that they have agreed to stay on – in the interests of the players – which is admirable, but they knew when they accepted their appointments that the team they would be coaching would not be a merit-selected one, teams going to the SA Rugby youth weeks haven’t been chosen that way for decades now.

No-one is saying that they don’t have a point, but demanding that representative teams be chosen on merit is not helpful in our system.

There’s a quota in place of at least 12 players of colour in every 23-player squad. There’s nothing in what I’ve read about the matter suggesting that this was not met in this case. But, it seems the union was not happy with how it was met. EP President George Malgas, in his response, referred to the team as not being “representative of EP’s demographics.”

His complaint was that the players put forward came from a handful of schools from the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, and two schools from Makhanda. “We were not happy to accept this list. It had not made any provision for players from the previously disadvantaged areas,” he is quoted in SA Rugby Magazine as saying.

That’s new, and if it is the way that the senior provincial federations are going to see things, then the model currently in use no longer applies. What’s happening in EP, clearly, is that talented black players have been recruited by the good rugby schools in PE, and in Grahamstown, where they get the coaching and exposure and end up (very often on merit) in the provincial system. They wouldn’t do that if they stayed at schools in the rural and township areas they came from – would Siya Kolisi have eventually captained the Springboks if he didn’t go to Grey High School?

And that’s what’s happening everywhere in the country. SA Rugby has handed its responsibility for transformation over to the schools. Is Mr Malgas going to ensure that proper talented player development takes place in the areas that he describes as “disadvantaged and rural communities (that) are systematically deprived of opportunities.”

If he is, and if SA Rugby funds and rolls out similar programmes in all the provinces, if transformation, in other words, moves from counting the number of black faces in team photos to real grassroots development, that would be great. And, in time, players who remain in those areas and don’t get bursaries to the traditional rugby schools will be included in the selected teams.

The cricket people have been doing it. CSA runs a Hub development programme in disadvantaged areas and players are coming through. The 2025 captain of the South African Schools team, Emathi Kitshini, is from Thembalethu High School in George, the first player from the Hub development program to captain the elite SA Schools side.

So, it can be done. But will SA Rugby go that way any time soon? 

 

I was an old-fashioned reporter again and it was great

 

I was asked by old friend Hannes Neinaber to help out with SuperSport Schools’ reporting on Saturday. There were just too many big schools rugby games on the go and they are short on capacity, following the departure of the impressive Franco Oberholzer – they are going to miss him.

Jeppe were in Durban and I didn’t have the stomach for the Ben Schoeman to go watch St John’s against Pretoria Boys’ High, so I agreed and went off to St Stithians where Parktown were the visitors.

I’m so glad I did. It was great to write an old-fashioned match report again. To not care about the result and to take action shots without worrying who the players in them were.

The bonus was that I got to see a cracker of a game. I suggested in my preview that these were two schools who were off their rugby best. No-one told that to the players on the field, or to the schoolboy spectators in the stands. It was as red-blooded and exciting as any game I’ve seen in a while and the spectators – adjudged the number one and two best supporters in the land in a recent competition – roared, chanted and jived from before the first whistle until well after the last.

And don’t presume there’s a lack of skill in those teams. Saints have a mighty scrum and a fierce defence; Parktown have some big ball carriers up front, and a couple of bewildering steppers at the back.

I’ve said it before (and maybe it’s not the right thing to say these days), but Parktown, with only black players in their lineup show that rugby is for everyone and talent knows no stereotypes.

I’ve not been to Saints for a while, but another of my former chirps still holds true – you’ll battle to find a better spread in the VIP area, or more hospitable hosts than they are.

Parktown won by three points, but I don’t care.

Plenty of highlights there.

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.

My sporting highlight - the Joburg Derby

 

My sporting highlight of the weekend? .....

Well, there was Wits winning the Varsity Shield final on Friday night, and Rory’s thank yous at the Green Jacket ceremony at Augusta, but (with a bit of bias) it has to be Jeppe’s win over KES in the Joburg schools rugby derby.

It was as big a day as you’d come to expect. A capacity crowd, sideshows aplenty, and plenty of passion. KES, as expected, cleaned up in the rugby, across the board. They have the better players, particularly in the lower teams, and the better coaching. The best Jeppe could do was to try to keep in the games and not get blown away. It seems they did that – the losing margins, generally, were smaller than in previous years and there were not too many runaway scores.

Jeppe won the 1^st and second team games. Their 1^st team forwards were noticeably bigger, and KES couldn’t match their physicality which, the way the game has gone these days, generally results in defeat.

KES won the 1^st team hockey game. I saw that described as a shock defeat for Jeppe. It was not. KES had a much better run-in to the game, and Jeppe’s early season woes continued. They probably had more attacking intrusions than their opponents, but they couldn’t get past a resolute defence, and they squandered too many promising opportunities.

So, KES’ hockey win was expected, as was Jeppe’s rugby win – they had the bigger guns.

I’ve been going on for a while on the nature of ‘proper’ derbies. SuperSport Schools has taken to calling traditional inter-school fixtures derby games. They are not. Saturday’s game was: it was the 101^st clash of its kind, between schools that are close neighbours and it grabs the attention of a large part of the city.

In the process, the game gets hyped up to an unacceptable level. It should be just another fixture, and the coaches do their best to keep their players grounded and away from the distractions, which is absolutely what they should do.

They don’t succeed, I’m afraid. 1^st team school rugby has evolved into something that no longer fulfils its educational mandate. There were “regular fixtures” in the old days, before winning at all costs, with the money to support it, became a feature of the game at this level. Those days are long gone.

The derby between Jeppe and KES is not just another game. It obviously should be, but it obviously isn’t. The crowds that attend it, the passion shown by both sides on and off the field, and the final-whistle reactions of the winners and losers, tell you that.

And I’ve taken some flak for saying so. I’ve been around these issues for an awfully long time, and I think my record and my writings have shown that I do know what school sport is actually all about. You can call it just another game, but no-one’s buying it.

Still, there’s nothing quite like being at a day like Saturday was. It was my highlight, hands down.   

The best Easter Festival? They are all unique and all fabulous.

We engaged on Saturday in the cricket museum at KES – that once a year doubles up as Derron van Eeeden’s control centre for their Easter Festival – in our annual discussion of which is the best of Joburg’s three annual rugby (and other sports) extravaganzas.

The lady from Standard Bank was there, so she could weigh in on what it’s like to deal with the three schools – KES, St John’s and St Stithians – from the sponsor side. I know nothing about those things, but I guess I’ve been going to these events for more years than anyone else that’s still around so I do have opinions.

I don’t have definitive answer, though. They all do one very special thing: they bring to Joburg, once a year, the fabulous rugby school from around the country that we as lovers of the game at this level only ever hear about. The advent of Supersport Schools has changed that, but it’s certainly still better to be there and to experience the atmosphere.

The Saints Festival was the first, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. I was at the very first one, in 1984. I was the coach of a team that would never be invited there and I watched schools like Bishops and Maritzburg College with wide-eyed wonder. Later, when I was a referee, I was one of the officials there for a few years, and part of the family. The after-match drinks in Dave Wylde’s house above the Jamieson field were very special. In fact, in the early days there were compulsory pre-match drinks too - the rival coaches were made to have a beer together before their teams met on the field, to make sure that the game would be played in the right spirit. Those days are long gone now.

The St John’s Festival came in 1998, and KES in 2002 Same-same but different. Each has its own character and way of doing things. I, as a wandering school sports reporter, used to spend one day at each at one stage. The rugby was always fabulous at all three and the hospitality top-class.

In the FNB days, a classic caravan was parked under a tree at one end of the ground at St John’s. It was the media centre and the forerunner of the fabulous communications structure that they lay on now. Without a doubt, the best place to watch the rugby from, as a working journalist, is the St John’s media venue. 

Since my retirement as a reporter, KES is where I spend Easter each year (full disclosure: they pay me to be there, although I would gladly pay them for the experience). They give me a place to sit in the tournament office, and I leave at the end of each Festival newly amazed at the level of commitment and the sheer hard work put in by so many, mainly volunteers, to make it all work. I know the same activities are going on at the other two festivals, but at KES I see it for myself.

And the person at the center of it is Derron Van Eeden. She has been the festival director at King Edward’s for all the festivals they’ve had and she knows how to do the job. The grace and efficiency she brings to the never-ending queue of queries that is her day, is quite amazing to see.

So, which festival is best? I couldn’t possibly say, of course. But on Saturday, as I sat in my corner of the cricket pavilion at KES, behind a mountain of boxes of T shirts, accreditation tags, walkie talkie chargers, and marshmallow Easter eggs; with recency bias and self-interest in my mind, I thought: you’d have to go a long way to beat this one.

What's a little rain?

You have to love cricket people and the lengths they will go to make it possible for the game to go ahead.

This week at the Switch Schools SA20 finals I watched the ground staff and officials spend an hour and half getting the wicket at the Tuks Oval to a state where a shortened game could take place. And just as the players were taking the field, the heavens really opened and everyone rushed to put the covers back on. Half an hour later the rain stopped and they took the covers off again, under the most ominous skies since the great flood.

They went back out again but the game was eventually abandoned after a few overs were bowled, when the rain came back again and time ran out.

The scenes were repeated the next day. In that case there were enough overs bowled for a result to be declared according to the Duckworth-Lewis method. It was interesting to see that, when the rain came back near the end and it was clear that it was all over, the fielding players took off to fetch the rain covers, followed closely by the batting team - leaving the dry of the clubhouse. It was instant and instinctive, it's a lesson cricketers are taught at their schools: when your game’s over you cover the pitch so that someone else can play on it tomorrow.

That finalists in the boys and girls sections were identified at the end of that rain-soaked week was testament to the determination that there must be play, if it's in any way possibe.

You have to love cricket people.

The Jeppe U14 festivals were absolutely worth the time and money

My sporting highlight of the weekend? ….. Well, the Lions thumping the Stormers, obviously, and St David’s showing they belong among the water polo top guns, producing that final against Bishops at the KES tournament.

But it’s got to be the two U14 festivals at Jeppe. They haven’t been tournaments for a number of years now and that’s how it should be. Two schools pulled out of it this year (a third did so last year) because, apparently, they think it is a waste of time and money if 13 year-olds aren’t playing for league points and a trophy – imagine that!

The festivals were great events without them. The disappointment I saw on faces when games were called off because of lightning and rain, showed that while the results don’t count, the boys want to play, and they play to win.

You can see the schools take their responsibility to teach the little ones properly by the quality of the coaches they send. The legendary Coach Vipes - Roland Andongndou, possibly the most experienced (and one of the more successful) school basketball coach around, was in the St Stithians corner at the basketball. The equally experienced Alex Christians is with the Jeppe team; and I spotted St John’s 1st team coach, Clemen Kock, watching his school’s babies with keen interest.

Down at the pool, there was one current national player, Luka Rajak, coaching the St John’s team and another – David Marshall - refereeing many of the games. The number one referee in the country, Lucky Letshabo, also officiated in some of the matches.

Steven La Marque a former director of coaching of SA Water Polo was there, coaching the Maritzburg College team; and Jason Sileno who has coached SA national sides at various levels, was there with St Stithians.

The water polo teams played nine games over their four days, the basketball teams slightly less. And in the absence of having to win at any cost, all the players in the squads got time on the court or in the pool. I was watching out for that particularly, and I can confirm that it happened.

If that’s not worth the money and effort, I’m not sure what is. 

School sport commercialism. Hell no!

 

I really don’t know where to begin with throwing in my two cents worth about the recent School Sport Commercialisation Conference. The idea that a sports programme in a school should be seen as generator of revenue is just so wrong to me that anything that might have been said at the conference, no matter how internally logical it may sound, and no matter how good it sounds in the narrow context of what was discussed, is the fruit of a poisoned tree, and I reject it all, without having heard a word of it.

I realise that makes me sound like a puritanical lunatic, but I think this so important that I’ll have to live with that.

I’ve been calling for a complete reset of school sport for some time (and we all know that we are really talking about school rugby here). The genie is out of the bottle, and we are never going to fix things incrementally. I find myself thinking, from time to time, that surely this is as bad as it can get. Recent examples are the ranking of sports schools in the country, which was just loony; the report on player movements between schools; and just last week, a list of school players to watch this season, like they do at the start of World Cup tournaments.

But this one takes the cake. Anyone who tells you it’s the role of schools to run sports programmes that make them attractive to sponsors and ultimately earn money for the school, should be run out of town and never allowed to return.

I get it that the popularity of schools rugby, in particular, is already generating money, and very little of it is going to the schools playing the games. I also know that rugby programmes, in this near professional era, are very expensive to run, and if they want to maintain and grow them, the schools need sponsorships.

But understanding is not approval. This latest development feels like a capitulation to those forces, without asking why they are there and if they belong in school sport.

They obviously don’t. And the real reason why is because the entire edifice is built on the children that play in the games. Are they being considered? Are we sucking more and more of the fun out of it all. To command the big bucks your teams have to perform. The demands placed on the children to make that happen are well documented, as are the dodgy practices that stem from that. The motivation behind it has been about things like school prestige, a magnet for recruitment, and a whole lot of ego for the adults involved. That boosting the commercial value of the school should be added to that list is so bad that, as I said, I just don’t know where to begin.

And it’s all terribly elitist, of course. The kind of commercialisation they are talking of is only for the haves. It’s been accepted that you can’t perform at that level without commercial input, so the top schools are the ones who have the means and they are the ones looking to boost their value. There are only a handful of them, and they were at that conference It’s not for the rest. It’s about the rich and greedy growing the pie and sharing it among themselves. The top of the pile gets higher and higher and the desert around them increases in size and aridity. Rugby is already dying everywhere outside of the schools in the top 20 ranking. This is accelerating the process.

I’m reminded of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The townsfolk were greedy, remember, and refused to pay the piper for his services. So, he led their children away. Gone forever. They were so concerned about money that they forgot all about the children. I hope we are not doing that too.

 

It's a new year - now's a good time to get rid of those rankings

 

There was an article on one of the rugby sites recently, reporting player movements ahead of next season. It wasn’t about the URC, or the Currie Cup. The author was speaking about the transfer of schoolboy players between schools. He was referring to 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old rugby players, using the same language that you read in discussions of English Premier League player movements during the transfer window.

The author claims to be privy to discussions that should really only be between parents and the schools their boys are at (and going to), and between the heads of the schools involved. That those conversations should be public in the public domain tells me we are in far worse trouble than I feared.

And we are in trouble. The educational principles that lie at the foundation of everything that happens at, or in the name of a school – and that includes sport – are increasingly being compromised, or even abandoned, in the cause of winning.

And rugby, like it or not, is the most prominent and popular of all the games played at schools in this country, and winning rugby games has taken on an importance that seems to override logic and common decency. Winning becomes the dominant value and, because people are prepared to do what it takes to uphold their values, that means winning at all costs.

That’s what has led to the situation described in that article. Scouting and recruitment of talented players, wherever they are, has become an industry and the transactions implied don’t come cheap.

But that’s not all. All manner of other practices are becoming more and more prevalent at school level. Early specialisation is one of them. You’ll battle to find a reputable child psychologist or sports physiologist who will tell you that teenagers should be putting all their time and energy into one activity, all year-round. Yet, schools start their preparations for next year’s winter at the start of the previous year’s summer, demanding (and often getting) 1^st choice when it comes to the time of the boys, and the use of the school’s fields and facilities.

Because rugby success has become a measure of the worth of a school (as crazy as that notion is), it didn’t take long for the school sport sites to come up with a way of measuring schools against each other – seeing that there are no leagues – by publishing regularly updated ranking lists.

Now, they are obviously farcical: you cannot compare apples and oranges, no matter how much you might come up with formulas, explanations and algorithms. But parents and old boys – not groupings that are renowned for their ethical attitudes to winning and losing – love them and keenly follow their updates.

The headmasters of schools, almost to man, don’t approve. They actually shouldn’t approve of anything I’ve described above, and they all signed a document saying they don’t, years ago.

Yet the rankings persist and multiply, and they generate the clicks. Taking them out of the equation would be a good place to start in getting the entire sport back on an educational track. And doing so is possible. Schools should simply stop sending in their results to those sites and order the compilers of ranking lists to leave them out. Legal action should be threatened, if necessary, it’s that important.

The Schools Sport Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2017 by the heads of State and Independent Schools doesn’t mention rankings specifically – they weren’t much of a thing back then - but the principles agreed to in it certainly don’t allow for a ranking system. In my opinion there is no reason why the heads of schools shouldn’t simply refuse to be part of one.

Just about all of the top sport schools are part of the agreement. Without them in it, the ranking system will wither and die.

It’s a good place to start, and as we head into a new year, now’s a good time.

My Top 10 for 2025

 

Here's my annual thumb-suck exercise. These are the 10 school sport related things that stood out for me in 2025. It's subjective, based on events I attended - or watched on SuperSports Schools. 

Of course there are others worthy of making the list. I stopped at, 10 though.

1 Let’s get the regulars out of the way first. St Benedict’s won the boys teams competition at the SA Schools Rowing Championships for the 31st consecutive year, and the schools boat race for the 8th year in a row. Just who is going to topple them from their throne remains a mystery.

2 Western Province beat SWD in the “main game” at the Craven. It was their 6^th consecutive unofficial champions title and it took their winning streak at the week to 18 games. The quality of the top rugby schools in the Western Cape (and some them should really be in the Boland) is such that it’s difficult to see them losing any time soon.

3 The Golden Lions XV beat Western Province in the final of the Academy Week. I know WP has two sides in the Craven Week, so they beat the Province C team, but it was third main game win a row, which is quite an achievement. The Lions Craven Week side has performed poorly in all of those three years. Some might say the Lions have a selection problem, I couldn’t possibly comment, of course.

4 The comeback of the King Edward rugby team after a disastrous start to the season was something to observe. The Reds scraped a narrow win over St John’s to start and then blew a 23-6 lead to lose to Jeppe. They then went to Noord-Suid where they lost 102-0 to Paarl Gim, and went down to SACS. Back home, there was another defeat – to Pretoria Boys High - before they turned a corner at their Easter Festival where they beat Rondebosch and looked likely to beat Northwood when the game was called off due to lightning. They were to cause major upsets later on, beating Noordheuwel and Helpmekaar, and they beat Pretoria in the return fixture. There were to be more losses, but they were in very competitive games against good sides. It was a great example of fighting back when people had written you off.

5 The SACS 1^st hockey team was unbeaten, again. They finished the year as the number one ranked team. Rankings are bollocks, I believe, and this case proves that. When SACS were put into 1^st place after one game back from an overseas tour, they were always going to stay there. Their only competition, really, was Jeppe, who they don’t play. Who is to say that Jeppe wouldn’t have beaten or drawn with them?

6 The Affies 1^st rugby team lost to Paarl Boys High and Grey College and drew with Paarl Gim, which, according to the compilers, ranked them third in the land. There’s no question, though that they are the best rugby school in the country by every other measure. They can field the most teams on match day – 30 or more – and they almost never lose a game. I watched them play Jeppe and while their 1^st team had to dig deep to beat a determined Jeppe side, all their other teams won comfortably, including some of their lower open teams playing the 1^st teams of smaller schools.

7 Jeppe hockey teams won all three Southern Gauteng knockout cups, the U19 Aitken, U16 Alan Monk and U15 Boden Trophy. The Aitken Cup win was Jeppe’s their 21^st, the most by any school. The 1^st team was unbeaten in the season – they played 31 games, won 29 and drew two.

8 Two outstanding individual performances. Jason Rowles of St David’s was named the CSA U19 Men's Player of the Year, even though he is still in Grade 11. He made the SA Schools team in 2024 and was Batsman of the Week at the Cubs Week in January. He was co-captain of the SA U19 team during the year. He captained his school to the national playoffs of the inaugural SA Schools T20 competition this year and was named the Central Gauteng Lions U18 Player of the Year.

9 Keegan Cockburn took five wickets off five balls against KES in the 19^th over of the Central Gauteng final of the SA20 competition in November. He finished with figures of 5/7 off four overs, but KES won the game by one wicket, getting the winning runs off the final ball.

10 Central Gauteng won the main games – the U19 girls and boys finals – at the Schools Water Polo SA inter provincial tournament at St David’s in December. Western Province took the overall title, based on medals won in all five age group divisions. Central Gauteng did a great job of organising the event, which involved over 2 000 players and several hundred officials. There were 430 matches played over four days and, despite lighting disruptions and venue changes (sometimes mid-game) on every day, the prize-giving at the end of it was just half an hour late.

11 I said I will limit it to 10. Of course I’ve got an 11^th, simply because we aren’t likely to see anything like this again any time soon. In January there were four St Stithians old boys – Kagiso Rabada, Wiaan Mulder, Ryan Rickelton and Kwena Mapakha – in the same Proteas team in a Test against Pakistan. And now that 19 year-old Lhuan-dre Pretorius is establishing himself in the national teams in all three formats, it’s quite possible that we might have five Saints old boys in one team soon.

The 50th SWPSA IPT is going to be huge - it wasn't always that way

 The 50^th South African Schools Water Polo tournament takes place next week. It will be played at eight school pools around Johannesburg. And it will be massive - there are 10 sections, involving over 2000 players and several hundred officials.

That’s very different to what it must have been like in 1975 when the 1^st tournament was held at Ellis Park. I wasn’t involved back then – my first SA Schools was in 1981, in Bloemfontein - but the provinces and people involved hadn’t changed much by then.

It was an U19 boys tournament at first and the competing provinces were: Transvaal, Northern Transvaal, Eastern Transvaal, Natal, Western Province, Eastern Province, Border and Free State. Natal won it just about every year.

I was sent to the 1981 tournament as manager of the Transvaal B team by Buddy Herd – the headmaster of Athlone Boys’ High, who basically ran things among the Joburg schools back then.

At that tournament I met the men who ran the game. Some of them moved on soon afterwards (Buddy Herd retired the next year) and others went on to make deep inroads in the game at school level.

Dredging my memory, I recall the following pioneers of the SA Schools tournament. Almost all of them have passed on now, leaving me as a rather patchy recorder of those early days.

The chairman of what was called the South African Schools Water Polo Association was Johan Terblanche. He was also the chairman of SA Schools swimming. The ties between swimming and polo were strong back then, but the relationship was not a happy one – not much has changed in that regard in the last 50 years.

His sidekick was Nico Lamprecht of DHS and Natal. He was a water polo man and actually ran things. His involvement was to continue for many years and it’s fair to say that he became a legend. He is still alive although I’m told he is struggling with poor health.

There were a number of other, compared to me, older men in charge. They were all prominent water polo men in their cities. Ken Kuiper from Northern Transvaal wasn’t a teacher, but he was a coach and referee; Karel Elferink From Eastern Province was a leading figure in water polo down there; Chris Waller from Western Province was headmaster of Tableview High School and, I recall, an advocate of girls polo at a time when very few other even knew it was being played; Tess Uren kept the game going for many years at schools level in Eastern Transvaal, a water polo powerhouse that never had a strong interschool structure; the 1981 tournament was organised for Free State by Abrie Pepler and Russell Keet, both of whom moved to East London later, where Russell went on to head a sporting family dynasty; the Border men in Bloemfontein in 1981 were Mike Boy and Charl Wessels, both teachers who went on to serve the game for many more years.

I was thrown into running the association in Joburg when Buddy Herd suddenly retired for medical reasons, and I was involved for the next 16 years. Nico was a constant presence in that time, as was Alan Burt, who ran the refereeing side. Ian Melliar started refereeing soon afterwards and was to become another selfless, long-serving, presence around the game.

There is, of course a long list of men and women who have got this tournament to its 50^th year. The 2025 tournament is a very different beast to the 1975 one and the current organisers are brilliant. Those who started it off, and those that nudged it ahead along the way, shouldn’t be forgotten, however. Along with those mentioned above, here are few others who were involved in my time:

The Zimbabweans, some of whom later moved South and carried on their work here: Fred Wilson, Piet van Tonder, Peter Phillips.

Alan Footman was the Western Province coach in the early days, he was a constant presence, and one of the great characters of the game.

Brian Daley coached the Eastern Transvaal team for years, and put his son Simon into the team as a 13 year-old, and watched him grow into one of South Africa’s greats.

Dave Pitcairn, who started off in Joburg with me and then moved to Cape Town where he was instrumental in waking the sleeping giant that is Western Province schools water polo. His work was carried on by the Schoolings, Doug and Norma, who took the province to another level.

Steven la Marque was a player at that 1981 tournament in Bloemfontein. He went on to throw himself into coaching and was to become possibly the most prominent administrator of the game in the recent past.

I’ll be remembering them next to the pools in Joburg next week. Their legacies and spirits will be looming large.

St John's (and Gauteng) polo are tops again

 

My sporting highlight of the week ….

St John’s and St David’s contesting the final at the SACS water polo tournament (with SACS and Rondebosch playing off for 3^rd place) and producing a thriller, won in the final second of extra time by St John’s.

Water polo has been big in my life. I was part of the small group that revived the Edwardian Cup (still played for at the KES tournament) in 1982. SACS was one of the out-of-town schools invited to the first one – mainly because Alan Footman and Andre Britz were mates – the polo toppies out there will know who they are – and it was in the old bar at Old Eds one night that Footy came up with the idea of replicating the concept at SACS.

The first SACS Festival was held in 1984 and for quite a few years following, KES and SACS were the only national inter-school water polo tournaments.

End of the history lesson. On Monday St John’s won the 40^th edition, and I’m happy about that, and even happier that their opponents in the final were St David’s. It was St John’s 6^th title equalling the number of wins by the hosts, with DHS and Rondebosch winning five each. It was St David’s first time in the final.

Monday’s outcome, following up on Central Gauteng Aquatics ending on top at the SA Schools Water Polo Championships in East London at the end of last year – they won five of the 10 age groups, including the U19 boys and girls - shows that the school water polo power hasn’t shifted to the Western Cape on a permanent basis, as many of us up here were fearing.

It also showed that the financial muscle of some schools in KZN that has put a stranglehold on the brightest young coaches around, is not producing invincibility (not yet anyway).

Bishops won the KES tournament earlier this year, and Hilton beat St John’s in the final at Clifton last week. You can argue that those are “proper” tournaments, with full length games in bigger pools than the one at SACS. There are very good teams out there I know, but for today, St John’s, and Gauteng, are on top of the hill.

And that is certainly a highlight!

No rest for the wicked - or for the teachers at the serious sporting schools

 

They say there’s no rest for the wicked. That may be true, but in my experience, there are some very good men and women who happily give up their precious periods of rest, year after year, for the benefit of other people’s children.

I’m talking about the teachers at the best of our schools, of course, and although they may or may not receive some sort of travel and sustenance allowance for the days that they are away from home; and their efforts are borne in mind, I hope, when annual bonuses are allocated, they do it for no financial reward.

I spend some time at two of Joburg’s boys schools these days and their upcoming short October holiday period - which was, I guess, originally intended to give everyone a breather ahead of the push towards the final exams – is jammed with tours and tournaments in all of the summer sports codes that have only just began their 2025/6 seasons.

Two of the big 1^st team ones. The Michaelmas Cricket Festival at Maritzburg College, and the SACS Waterpolo Tournament, have been going for many years. Now they have been joined by competitions in the other age groups and, of course, by the Basketball tournaments and festivals that have been started up in response to the phenomenal growth of that game at schools.

While the opportunities created for so many children to do what they love and to learn the lessons that going on tours teach (along with the sacrifices made by those teachers and coaches) are a positive thing, there is also another side to it all.

It’s all calendar-driven. There’s room for just two rounds of interschool sports fixtures in the fourth term, before exams begin, and there is so much rugby and hockey on the cards the next year that the 1^st term dates available for the summer sports have been curtailed over the years.

So, it’s beginning to look like the summer codes are being organised according to tournaments and festivals, rather than featuring a game a week against traditional local rivals, like we used to have back when I was involved. Hockey and rugby are also going that way, it seems.

Since then, a number of the schools that were involved in weekly fixtures against the schools where I work have dropped out. They are no longer competitive and no longer field enough teams to make it worthwhile for the bigger schools.

That’s a tragedy, and there are many reasons why that has happened, one of the main ones being that they find themselves on the other side of the professionalisation of school sport coin. Their talent has been stripped through recruitment and, admittedly, they no longer put in the effort that they used to (for their own reasons).

So, at schools where mass participation is a value that is striven for – alongside elite high performance – you have to go the festival route to get enough games for your teams.

That’s why, over the next two weeks, the schools I mentioned, along with the others of their ilk across the land, will be in action in the Midlands, in Gqeberha, at Grey College, in Pretoria, and Paarl and Durban.

I’ll be keeping an eye on as much of it as I can, thanks to the magic of SuperSport Schools. And thanking the Lord for that horde of teachers who have forgone their well-deserved rest to make it all happen.

Lessons aplenty as cricket season gets going

 

The school cricket season’s here. Well, almost, there is still a football season to get through, but, for me, the Fasken Time Cricket Festival at St David’s Marist Inanda marks the changing of the season for the serious cricketing people and I was once again fortunate to have a seat inside the organisation, tasked with taking some pictures and putting together a little newsletter each day.

It’s quite an undertaking, made tougher by the fact that, as a far as mother nature is concerned, those massive lawns at St David’s, and at the other schools who hosted games, are just not ready for this particular type of ball game yet. You can tell they aren’t because they have the distinctive lines, semi-circles and rings that tell you football is taking place, clear for all to see.

That didn’t deter from some proper cricket being played though. The Fasken is special because it’s a festival of two-day games. There’s no rush to bowl the limited number of overs allocated, nor is there the imperative to smash runs off every ball. That kind of cricket comes later on in the season, and it’s hugely entertaining – I watch it whenever I can.

No, the relative leisurely pace of these games allows for the more classic skills and behaviours of the game to be applied, and it’s there that the lessons are learnt that make cricket such a good game to include in the bouquet of processes that schools utilise in the raising of young people who will be good adults one day.

Cricket is unique in some ways and it’s in those idiosyncrasies, often, that the life lessons lie.

For example, at the end of each day we, the recorders of facts and snappers of pictures, had to wait a while before the purple cap handovers could happen (more about them just now), while both sets of players disappeared into the distance to fetch the rain covers and lay them on the wickets. That’s a lesson cricketers are taught – when your game’s over you cover the pitch so that someone else can be sure of playing on it tomorrow

And those purple caps. At the Fasken the teams are asked to watch their opponents appreciatively and award a cap to who they believed was their best player on the day – you don’t see that in too many other games.

Walk from field to field, like I did, and you’ll see the players who aren’t on the field sitting together under a tree, or a gazebo. They stay put all day, trash-talking most of the time, but the coaches are amongst them, sightly off to one side, taking advantage of the teaching moments that always arise. Show me another sports event where fit, energetic teenagers show that sort of discipline.

I looked out for, and saw the customary special moments that you only see on a cricket field - a team disappear down the hillside to look for a lost ball; rounds of applause for special opponents’ performances – 50s and 100s scored, unplayable balls bowled; a wicketkeeper taking off his gloves to tie a batsman’s loose shoelace; and a fielder stretching out the leg of a cramping batsman.

Like I said – raising young people who will be good adults one day.

The Fasken’s done – roll on the cricket season.

It's Fasken time!

 

Next week this time we’ll be into day one of the first two-day matches at the Fasken St David’s Time Cricket Festival.

Interesting name. Time cricket is a cricket thing, I’ll get into that just now, but it’s also Fasken time. When Dave Nosworthy, director of cricket at St David’s decided to change what was the a pretty successful T20 tournament at this time of the year into a time cricket event – for reasons we’ll also get to later – he probably never dreamed that the players and coaches at schools that play in it would in time get to rub their hands, once the rugby final whistle was  blown, and the last hooter sounded at the hockey turf, and say it’s Fasken time!

There’s the excitement of getting out there after a long winter of indoor nets, but there’s also the exclusivity and prestige involved. Serious sporting schools know what “the Fasken” means. No explanation is needed, just like with Nomads, Noord-Suid, SACS tournament, Michaelmas.

It’s Fasken time – let’s get going.

But it’s also Fasken Time Cricket. Time cricket is a bit of misnomer because time doesn’t really count, outside of the overall number days allocated – five in a Test, four in a first class game, two at the Fasken. And there is no limited number of overs that a side can bowl. You have to bowl the opposition out, or their captain can declare, setting you a target.

There are all sorts of good reasons for exposing schoolboy cricketers to declaration cricket, and to get them playing longer forms of the game, says Nosworthy. “The batsmen,” he says, “need to learn to spend more time at the crease, without the limited-overs restraints. The bowlers need to be able to bowl longer spells and be brought back later on. The players need to get a feel for proper cricket, with matches that go on, day after day.”

In limited-overs cricket there’s no room for innovation, and no requirement to apply cricket thinking to unfolding situations on the field, Nosworthy believes. “Captains must learn that sometimes you have to be prepared to lose in order to win. They need to be patient, to be brave and to set targets that give them a chance of winning. Those lessons that can’t be taught in limited-overs cricket. And exposure to time cricket is important to let young players experience what it’s like to bat all day or being on your feet two whole days,” he said.

The 12 captains and 150 odd players that will be at St David’s next week are entering the unknown. It’s going to be a great learning experience for them, and a lot of fun.

It’s Fasken (Time cricket) time!

The fixtures are:

Game 1 (28 and 29 August) - Waterkloof vs St David’s (La Valla Oval), Clifton vs Noordheuwel (Gier Oval), St Andrews vs Jeppe (La Rosey), St Charles vs KES (Temba Bavuma Oval), Nelspruit vs St Johns (Mitchell Oval), Lions XI vs St Stithians (Dlamini Oval).

Game 2 (30 and 31 August) - St David’s vs Lions XI (La Valla Oval), St Johns vs St Charles (Mitchell Oval), St Stithians vs St Andrew’s (Dlamini Oval), Jeppe vs Waterkloof (Gier Oval), KES vs Clifton (Temba Bavuma Oval), Noordheuwel vs Nelspruit (La Rosey).

 

 

An old and storied rivalry

 

I learnt in my days as a journalist not to deal in absolutes, especially when it comes to reporting on school sport. The early histories of schools are generally shrouded in the mists of time, they don’t always make logical sense and statistics are often a bit subjective - schools can have their own versions of events sometimes.

So, I’ve found, if you use terms like the oldest, the first, the biggest, the best etc, you will inevitably get someone telling you that you got it wrong.

In light of that, when I was told that the 1^st team rugby match between Jeppe and KES on August 2^nd – the second leg of their annual double-header derby fixture - is the 100th meeting between the two, my first question was, is it really?

So, I did a bit of research and, importantly, I spoke to the statisticians at KES and it is true that this game will be the 100^th meeting. The schools have been playing for 90 years, but in some years, including the last six in a row, they met twice in the same year.

KES are Jeppe’s oldest rivals, along with Parktown and Pretoria Boys’ High. The two schools met for the first time in 1935 and since then there have been 99 encounters. KES has won 63, Jeppe 30 and there have been six draws.

During the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, KES pretty much dominated the first rugby team results. Jeppe have clawed their way back in recent times. Jeppe won seven and lost four times in the years between 2010 and 2019.

It’s been honours even – five victories each – in the last 10 encounters.

Last 10 results

2018  Jeppe 40 KES 25
2019  KES 49 Jeppe 31
2019  Jeppe 25 KES 7
2022  KES 27 Jeppe 26
2022  KES 19 Jeppe 16
2023  KES 23 Jeppe 20
2023  Jeppe 41 KES 31
2024  KES 38 Jeppe 28
2024 Jeppe 25 KES 13
2025 Jeppe 37 KES 28

And it’s a proper derby game. It’s become common, in these days of festivals and tournaments, to call the traditional, one-on-one fixtures between schools, derbies. They are not.

A real derby is between neighbours and it’s a clash that goes beyond a routine traditional fixture.

It’s in the origin of the term. The original derby game was on Merseyside: Liverpool vs Everton. Look at Google Maps and you’ll see that Anfield and Goodison Park are less than 1km apart and separated by Stanley Park. The two grounds are actually both located on what used to be the Stanley Estate which was the property of the Earl of Derby. That’s why when they play each other it’s called the Derby game.

It’s not just about distance, though. I’ve never been to a Merseyside derby, but I’ve watched a couple of them on TV, and I’ve spoken to people who have been there – it’s definitely not just another Premier League fixture.

The biggest proper school derby in South Africa – in the world, the people down there claim – is the Paarl Gim vs Paarl Boys’ High game. I have been to that one. There is simply nothing like it. The town is split in half and the buildup to the game runs for weeks beforehand. Things have changed over the years and schools no longer draw pupils from their immediate surroundings, but the Paarl schools, in the past, were referred to as “onder-dorp” and “bo-dorp”: upper and lower town, the wine farmers vs the townsfolk. There’s a social and economic conflict there that adds spice to the encounter.

KES and Jeppe are just 5km apart by road, so they are also close neighbours, and The KES vs Jeppe game is similar to the Paarl game in terms of the contrast between the historical and socio-economic status of the communities involved. It’s Houghton vs Jeppestown, Northern vs Southern Joburg. The fact that the boys now come from all over town, and many of the rugby players from all over the country, notwithstanding, that difference in origins is something the old boys like to shout about – in a nice way – and it makes for a great occasion.

When the two teams met earlier this year, over 50% of the starting lineups were black, which speaks volumes about transformation and inclusivity at the two schools.

A few years ago one of the school sport websites ran a poll asking its readers to name what they saw as the biggest schoolboy rugby derbies in the country. Not surprisingly, the Paarl derby came out tops. Second was K-Day, the Grahamstown clash between St Andrew’s College and Kingswood, Jeppe vs King Edward was third.

Paarl Gim and Paarl Boys’ High first played each other in 1915, but the oldest derby rivalry on record is SACS vs Bishops (1873); Graeme College vs St Andrew’s is next oldest (1886), followed by Dale vs Queens (1891).

The Jeppe-KES game is a bit younger, but it qualifies as an old and storied rivalry.

There won’t be room for a mouse at game number 100, it’s going to be a ripper!

 

The TAG Foundation difference

 

My Sporting highlight of the weekend?

Well, two passes in the Test matches on Saturday – Russell to Sione Tuipulotu and Williams to Edwill Van der Merwe – were gorgeous, confirming for me that rugby has, at the least, equal rights with soccer to call itself the “beautiful game.”

But it has to be the Junior Springboks winning the U20 World Championship for the first time in 13 years.

Watching the Vusi Moyo masterclass in the final and reflecting on the fact that he and the hooker, Esethu Mnebelele, are both old boys of King Edward VII School, reminded me of the role that KES has played in rugby transformation in recent years.

Moyo and Mnebelele played for the SA Schools and U18 teams last year (Mnebele also did in 2023). When Golden Lions captain, Chinedu Amadi, made the SA Schools team at the end of the Craven Week this year he became the 16^th KES player to do so, beginning with Lee Barnard in 1974 – the 1^st time a national schools side was selected.

Amadi is at KES on a TAG Foundation bursary, as were Moyo and Mnebele. Thabang Mphafi, who made the SA Schools team in 2022, was also a TAG boy, as was Thando Biyella in 2023 (he was in Italy with the Junior Boks too this year). That means five of the last six KES boys to make the SA School team were on TAG Foundation bursaries.

Here’s where I get a little hypocritical around the edges. I’ve come out hard against the practice of schools recruiting rugby players on bursaries to strengthen their teams and claiming they are being altruistic.

I have, however, declared that there are exceptions. The TAG Foundation is one of those. Sure, they look for talented rugby players to assist, but no player is approached unless there are also compelling financial reasons. I spoke to the headmaster, and to someone at KES who has been very involved in the programme last week (ironically while we were watching a festival of teams who play the other beautiful game), and they described the family circumstances of all those boys. None of them could afford to go to the school on their own dime.

Not all the TAG beneficiaries are rugby players of course, and great care (along with donor-funding) makes sure they all fit in at the school and leave it after five years as the sort of men we have come to expect KES boys to be.

If it weren’t for TAG, none of those SA Schools players would have attended KES and we wouldn’t have seen Moyo and Mnebele in action in that final on Saturday.

All five of them were at KES since Grade 8, which means they were spotted as potential stars, who stood out despite their challenging circumstances, when they were 12 or 13 years old. That’s remarkable, and a huge feather in the cap of those who did the talent identification.

The majority of primary school rugby stars never make it to top high school levels, however, so the KES rugby programme had to help them over the next five years to reach their potential.

And TAG looked after them every step of the way – financially, pastorally and in their academic careers.

How’s all of that for a highlight?

It's different, but the Craven Week is still the best tournament of them all

 

I know I whine a bit about the way in which the Craven Week has become, in effect, a knockout tournament, far removed from the festival of rugby it used to be – played according to the values laid down by Dr Danie Craven himself, which expressly forbade any notion of a “winner of the week.”

The week has  become the logical outcome of the professionalisation of rugby at school level – and that has meant many of the “old ways” have been left behind.

That saddens me, especially when there are lines crossed, ethical and educational, in pursuit of victory, but it is still the greatest tournament at school level, anywhere that the game is played.

I’m going to be glued to the TV next week. And, even though I said I won’t be going through, I won’t be surprised if I end up getting into my car, or bumming a lift from someone, and taking the two-hour trip up the N4 to Middelburg on one of the days, any way.

Being selected for a provincial team has always been the ultimate dream of any schoolboy player and, although the quotas imposed on teams, has blurred the lines, I think it still is. I’ve had my say on the imposition of minimum numbers in the teams and other than saying yes - transformation is absolutely necessary, and no – it’s not being handled fairly or effectively, I’ll leave it at that.

There are 16 teams at the Craven Week, and 20 at the Academy Week and only five or six have a realistic chance of ever making the main game. For the rest of the teams not much has changed, I guess. Those boys are closing off their school rugby careers – or rugby at any level, for many of them – with something special, getting to know new team mates, and soaking up the unique experience.

And off the field there will still be those who like me have been going to the week for years, pretending to have a keen eye for emerging talent and taking down names that we are going to be hearing again in the years to come.

I know the big festivals like Noord-Suid and Wildeklawer, together with SuperSport Schools, have reduced the mystique, and much of the cream of schoolboy rugby is already well-known to us by the time Craven Week comes around.

But those events are notoriously pale in complexion. The good thing about the quota system is that the provinces have been forced to dig deep to find black boys who can play at this level, and there are schools who are developing them in numbers.

There will be gems unearthed in Middelburg next week.

It’s not quite the same anymore, but there is still nothing like the Craven Week. And every game will be on TV – that’s how special it is.

And FNB are the new sponsors. That's great news. They pioneered serious financial involvement in school rugby with their Classic Clashes, and the Easter Festivals back in the day. I have good memories of the days when I used to cover those events. I'm hoping they do what good sponsors do - pay up, back off and let the boys take centre stage. Do that and your brand will soar.