No Craven Week this year, and I'm not that sorry

In other times the Craven Week would have been under way in Port Elizabeth this week. It was cancelled, of course, along with all other school sports events. That was a wise decision, it turns out, seeing the number of infections really began to take off this week, particularly in the Eastern Cape.

It’s the first time since its inception in 1964 that the week hasn’t taken place. The other big schools interprovincial week, the Khaya Majola (previously the Nuffield Week) has seen gaps. Hannes Nienaber, in School of Rugby, points out that the 1955 Nuffield Week was called off because of a polio outbreak, and in 1971, when the so-called Border War was beginning to ramp up, the government decided that the boys must all go to the army straight away and should not be playing cricket.

In 1975 and 1976, Hannes explains the North Vaal Unions – those within the boundaries of the old Transvaal province -   had their own provincial festival because the Transvaal Education Department had moved to a three-term system ahead of the others.

Be that as it may, I’m sitting at home in the first week of July for the second year in a row having gone to just about every Craven Week since 1988. Last year I had a terrible sense of missing out, but at least we could see the games on TV and, besides, it was in Bloemfontein and one should actually be looking for reasons not to go there in the dead of winter.

This year it would have been in balmy Port Elizabeth and there are no games to televise so, I should be really downhearted. I’m not, however. I’ve had a lot of time to think, and it’s because the Craven Week is no longer what it used to be. It may not – for various reasons – survive this hiatus, but even if it does I’m not sure I’ll be that keen to make my annual pilgrimage to (what used to be) the shrine of schoolboy rugby.

Two years ago Coca-Cola ended their 37-year long sponsorship of the Craven Week. Later in that year they also pulled out of their school cricket and soccer commitments, so it seems it was part of a bigger cutback in spending. I’d been going to the week at Coke’s expense for quite a few years, so I knew a bit about how the sponsorship was managed and it was becoming, it seemed to me, a bit of an unhappy marriage in recent times.

The sponsors, through the sports management company they hired to handle things, were starting to interfere more and more and the SA Schools Rugby people, and SA Rugby, weren’t always sensitive to the sponsor’s needs.

And then SuperSport, with its special relationship with SA Rugby, has its demands. All the matches are televised live and they don’t want to air a friendly festival celebrating what people like me believe what is good in rugby. Dr Danie Craven’s principles for the week were quite quickly abandoned and it was turned, in effect, into a TV-friendly knockout tournament.

That’s one of the real reasons why, for me, the Craven Week has lost its charm.  The final fixture of the week, the so-called “main game” was reserved according to Craven for the two teams who played the most attractive rugby in their earlier two outings. I remember Craven storming into the press box at the Basil Kenyon Stadium in 1991 and giving us all an earful because he had seen that game referred to as “the final” in the local paper that morning. It turned out that the guilty party was the SAPA man – a road running specialist with no idea about the traditions – who had speculated on who would get the nod on the Saturday and the Herald had picked the story up.

Throwing the ball around, willy-nilly, wasn’t what was required however. Craven used to speak of effective attractive rugby and you’d never make the make the main game if you didn’t win your earlier encounters. There was the possibility of the unexpected however, and the lesser teams started off their campaigns with at least a chance of catching they eye with their style of play and getting a shot at upsetting one of the big guns.

Not anymore. Looking at the fixtures that were drawn up for the first two days this year, it’s clear that the quarter-final, semi-final, final format so loved by SuperSport (and many of their viewers) was meant to be in place once more.

On Monday Western Province were going to play Border and the Sharks against the Valke. On Tuesday Free State were going to be up against SWD and the Golden Lions would have played the Blue Bulls. Those are quarter-finals, no question, with the winners being matched in the second round – WP vs the Sharks and Free State vs the Lions or Bulls. The rest of the teams were there to make up the numbers.

The fixtures committee do like, if at all possible, to give the host province the final game, so Eastern Province were to be matched with Griquas, giving them an outside chance, depending on the quality of their victory. The matching of the Lions and the Bulls on day one was, some might say, a cynical way, probably WP-directed, to kick one of the two out of the bus at the first stop. I couldn’t possibly comment on that of course.

A Western Province vs Free State (or Lions/Bulls) final would be a great game, worthy of a Saturday morning TV slot. How that matchup would have been made would have had nothing to do with the values and traditions of the Craven Week, however.

I’m sorry I won’t be able to watch it, but I’m glad I won’t have been a witness to the process that got them there.

The percentages are up, but is that rugby transformation?

Team selection is based on achievement, it reflects excellence and form, and rewards the work and effort players put in to stand out from their peers.

Well, at least that is what it should be. We know that the best players sometimes don’t get selected. There’s partiality on the part of selectors who have vested interests, there’s bias and favouritism and yes, there are racial quotas which have to be adhered to. But the principle stands: selection is based on current and past performance.

Affirmative action operates at the other end of the process. It’s about potential and about giving the opportunity to achieve at some time in the future to individuals who would otherwise not get such an opportunity.

The two are not the same thing and when you select players for representative teams on the basis of skin colour and call it affirmative action you are missing the boat, and not doing anyone any favours.

In this country no lover of rugby can object to affirmative action – we can never reach our full potential if there are talented players who are being denied the chance to develop to their true potential  – but at the same time no lover of the game can be satisfied with the practice of forcing selectors to pick black players simply to meet numerical targets.

Affirmative action requires that you identify players with potential, make sure they get into the system and then take action to make sure they get the coaching and encouragement required to become good enough to be chosen on merit. That includes, when there is little to choose between two players, opting for the black one.

Rugby’s that kind of game. You need coaching, facilities and equipment and you need to play against quality opposition if you want to develop into a good player. The reason why the majority of Springboks (black and white) come from a handful of schools is because they get those things at those schools.

At those top schools the natural talent of the black players comes through and as a result a large proportion of the best players at the Craven Week, year after year, are black boys from schools like that. So, the SA Schools team and the SA under-20s, chosen according to a strict quota, can play against the top international teams and shine. What should be happening at the same time is that the coaching, facilities and competition levels at all schools should be lifted via a coherent development structure. No such thing exists.

Which brings me to SA Rugby’s recent back self-slapping statement declaring that they made significant progress in 2019 in terms of the transformation of the game in South Africa.

The gist of it was that their transformation barometer had leapt to 81% success in 2019, from 59% the year before. Success was achieved in 38 of the 47 areas of measurement set out in its Strategic Transformation Development Plan 2030 (STDP 2030).

That sounds impressive and seems to indicate that we are well on the way to reaching the goal that many of us a striving for – a time when rugby teams can be selected entirely on merit and, at the same time reflect the racial composition of the population.

It’s clear from what you see and hear, however, that we are still a long way from that. I wanted to see what the percentages quoted in the SA Rugby statement meant, so I downloaded the STDP 2030 document from their website. It’s a serious publication, glossy and well-designed and running to 60 pages long, and it’s all about race.

Four dimensions are laid out: Dimension 1: Access to the game; Dimension 2: Skills and Capacity Development; Dimension 3: Demographic Representation; Dimension 4: Performance; Dimension 5: Community Development and Social Responsibility and Dimension 6: Corporate Governance.

How the provinces are performing relative to targets set in each of these is the basis of the evaluation. What they mean by that is what percentage of players, coaches, referees and officials etc are black. And what black means is clearly spelt out. There are Black Africans - Black African South African citizens and Black people - a generic term used to refer to African, Indian, and Coloured South African citizens. The distinction is important when it comes to team selection targets and quotas.

The numbers certainly are up and, it seems, SA Rugby is quite proud of that. The problem is that there’s no distinction drawn between selection and affirmative action. How many of those black rugby people are there because their potential was identified and they were trained mentored and guided; and how many were selected because of a quota which had to be complied with?

For proper, sustainable transformation to happen, systems have to be put in place that bring people through the ranks in numbers. That costs money and takes hard work – it’s far easier to tell everyone, as STDP 2030 does, that you have to meet the numbers. When they do that, and the targets are met in that way, it seems a little hollow to be bragging about it via press releases.

Hand school sport back to the community

We are all quite fond of the maxim ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ even though there isn’t much evidence that shows that children are actually brought up that way these days. To start with, we haven’t lived in villages for hundreds of years, and in this age of extreme caution and hyper political-correctness it would probably be ill-advised to try to interfere with the way other people are raising their kids.

American author Peter Block is an authority on the power of the community and he advocates for communities to take responsibility for the raising of their children. He argues that our children aren’t raised by communities anymore. Instead we pay systems to raise our children – teachers, counsellors, coaches, youth workers, nutritionists, doctors etc.

We also pay service providers to treat and comfort the ill, for our safety and to take care of the elderly: all things, according to Block, that were taken care of in the community once. In the process we fall prey to smart marketing and advertising and we are manipulated into wanting things by those who are making money from the system.

Modern schooling is part of that. People chase after success and achievement and are prepared to pay for it, sometimes very dearly. It’s apparent everywhere in education, including sport. Few will argue with the principle that school sport is part of the educational process and, therefore, part of raising a child. There are no villages anymore, but there are communities and I would argue that a school is part of its community and through its sporting programme the school, together with the community it serves, has a responsibility to guide children on their path to responsible adulthood.

A school cannot abdicate that responsibility, neither can it outsource it. You can bring in coaches and conditioning experts and buy the best equipment. You can professionalise your programme, and that will bring positive results, and that’s fine. But if paid-for elements of the consumer system take control of the process you are heading for disaster, and the road to hell, in this case, is paved with the good intentions of the new media that praises to the heavens the professionalisation of sport at school level, and calls for more and more of it.

A professional programme will produce excellent young players and some of them will go on to play at higher levels. Only a fraction will make it, though, and at some stage you have to question the amount of money spent on them, and wonder about the rest of the players. As a school community you have a responsibility to raise all your children, not just the stars, especially if many of those stars aren’t part of your community but were brought in from somewhere else.

In any organised game the whole point is to win. You’d be wasting everyone’s time, and it would be an insult to your opponents if you went into competition without trying to be victorious. Teachers and coaches wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t prepare their teams with the goal of winning games in mind.

The question of course is how far you are prepared to go. Winning matches is certainly the aim, but do you make winning your dominant value? Honourable men, remember, are prepared to die for their values. That’s ridiculous, of course, but when you make winning the value by which you live, then you have no choice but to do everything you can to win. You have to win at all costs.

And that’s where it all begins. Take rugby. The spirit of the game, demands certain standards of ethical behaviour and sportsmanship. These are even spelt out in the Playing Charter which forms part of the Laws of The Game.

CONDUCT

These are the boundaries within which players and referees must operate and it is the capacity to make this fine distinction, combined with control and discipline, both individual and collective, upon which the code of conduct depends.

SPIRIT

Rugby owes much of its appeal to the fact that it is played both to the letter and within the spirit of the laws. The responsibility for ensuring that this happens lies not with one individual - it involves coaches, captains, players and referees.

The spirit of the law isn’t spelt out, but it’s one of those things that you recognise in its absence – you can see when something happens that’s just not within the right spirit. In cricket those unwritten laws have become a metaphorical way of describing human nature as a whole – we all know what is meant when someone says “It’s just not cricket”.

So, do you push the boundaries of good conduct, and do you disregard the spirit of the law because there’s nothing written down anyway and there can be no repercussions? If you believe in winning at all costs then you have to.

Schools are educational institutions, nothing else. Rugby at school level is part of the educational process and it falls under the principal. It doesn’t matter if there’s a trust that’s funding bursaries, or if the old boys are paying the salary of the coach, the principal is in charge, and takes responsibility for everything that involves the school.

And the principal is expected to make education the priority. That’s not optional, it’s his job. Every decision has to be educationally accountable – is the action taken in the best interests of the learners? There’s no room for debate in that. It’s educationally sound to insist that all boys sent out onto the rugby field are well-taught, conditioned and have the necessary skills. The principal can demand from the coaches that the teams are motivated, and have a desire to win. That’s part of sport, and it wouldn’t be educational to allow teams to go into games without caring about the result.

But when winning becomes the dominant value, educational considerations are often abandoned, along with the spirit of the game. More skillful, better-conditioned players are obviously a good thing and if a school’s high quality rugby programme sets a player on the path to a professional career ending up with first class or national honours, then that school has done its job in terms of vocational preparation and it has reason to be proud. Achieving these things requires a professional approach and as long as that approach is educationally accountable, every step of the way, then you cannot fault it.

It generally isn’t, however. Often the professional, rugby academy way of doing things is described as putting the player and his holistic education first, but when you don’t have to dig too deeply to discover that the real rationale is producing players who can help the school’s teams win matches. It’s part of the win at all costs outlook and school principals, I’m afraid, aren’t always entirely honest about it. They will speak about educational values, but are quite happy to allow all sorts of things happen, as long as the teams keep winning.

When the school commoditises sport provision and pays money to people from outside of the community to run its rugby programmes it is usually doing so because it wants to win. The website coverage, national rankings and social media attention reinforce the notion that a school’s value is tied to the performance of its 1^st rugby team, so winning becomes all important.

The raising of the children by the community has been taken over by the professionals and because it’s a case of win at any cost, the costs, financial and in the proper educational development of the children become irrelevant.

There are all sorts of mean-spirited, unethical, illegal and downright practices that follow, all in the name of winning. Scorched Earth recruitment practices, specialisation and over-training and substance abuse are only some of those.

The obscene amounts of money it takes to run school rugby professionally probably won’t be there when the pandemic is over. It’s the perfect time to hand the raising of the children back to the community, with the school playing a central role in that and to send the professionals to the professional game where they belong.

Taking the goalposts out of play was a good move. Now let's look at a few of the other crazy rugby laws

World Rugby’s decision to change the scoring law to exclude grounding the ball against the goal post or its surrounding padding was a welcome development. 

Not only did it remove an obviously unfair situation – how were the defending side, who were required to remain behind their goal line supposed to defend against an opponent grounding the ball against a cushion that extends half a metre infield – it also shows that the lawmakers are concerned with making rugby a fair contest all the time after all.

That it took so long for them to do so is a different issue of course. Coaches and players have been complaining about it for years and the wily ones have come up with a plan – lift the post protector up off the ground, so a try can’t be scored. It was only after initially saying doing that could result in a penalty try that they decided to stop the madness and change the law.

I’m wondering if this time of hiatus isn’t an opportunity to look at some other situations that are just unfair, and to do something about them.

I’ve got some suggestions to start with.

Holding

An inordinate number of penalties being awarded involve a tackled player with an opponent standing over him. The man on the ground is penalised for not releasing the ball when everyone in the world can see he has absolutely no chance of doing so.

The interpretation is that as long as the man on his feet is supporting his own body weight (which he almost never actually is) and as long as he visibly releases the tackled player for an instant, he can latch onto the ball and unless he is “cleaned” away (more of that later) he is virtually guaranteed a penalty.

The call is “holding” or “not releasing” made against the guy on the ground when the holder is actually the guy on his feet. And boy does he ever not release! The commentators are particularly effusive in their praise for those players who get their hands in there and cannot be budged.

The wrong player is being penalised, World Rugby! And you don’t even have to change the law, the current one tells us what should happen.

Law 14: Tackle, under Player Responsibilities says quite clearly:

Tacklers must:

5. Immediately release the ball and the ball-carrier after both players go to ground.

c. Allow the tackled player to release or play the ball.

d. Allow the tackled player to move away from the ball

Those breakdown heroes are actually villains and they are getting rewarded for it.

Cleaning

This is a quaint way of describing the way in which opponents are forcibly removed when they are attempting to go for the ball, usually at a ruck. 

One of the timeless principles of the game, surely, is that you cannot play a man who does not have the ball. The term “playing the man not the ball” has become an English idiom describing the worst sort of conduct in competition, yet it’s allowed in rugby these days, and called cleaning – for goodness sake! 

I’ve been scouring the Law Book trying to find out how it’s justified and I can’t.

It’s clear in Law 9: Foul Play that it’s illegal. Under Dangerous play it says:

14 A player must not tackle an opponent who is not in possession of the ball.

The next point does say:

15. Except in a scrum, ruck or maul, a player who is not in possession of the ball must not hold, push, charge or obstruct an opponent not in possession of the ball

But go to the laws covering scrums, ruck and mauls and you’ll see that binding plays a big role. You have to bind on an opponent in all those phases. Then you can remove him, I guess. Nowhere does it say that you can charge in and dive opponents out the way.

The referees do penalise certain types of dangerous cleaning out, and it has to be done in close proximity to the ball. That tells me they know it’s wrong. Why not write a new law clarifying all of this and get back to the old-fashioned traditions and virtues that the Playing Charter in the law book refers to.

The Driving Maul

This one I’m sure they are going to change soon. It’s so patently wrong that they don’t have a choice.

Look at Law 9: Foul Play’s first section: Obstruction and you’ll see that there is nothing about a maul off a lineout that is actually legal.

Here’s what the Law Book says about obstruction:

3. A player must not intentionally prevent an opponent from tackling or attempting to tackle the ball-carrier.

4 A player must not intentionally prevent an opponent from having the opportunity to play the ball, other than by competing for possession.

Go to Law 17: Maul, and you’ll see it says:

The purpose of a maul is to allow players to compete for the ball, which is held off the ground.

It was a clever coach somewhere that turned the maul into a try-scoring technique and it’s become acceptable. Put a stop to it, World Rugby. The defenders are the ones getting penalised, trying to defend the indefensible, how is that fair?

Besides, it’s boring!

You can download the latest Law Book at:

https://www.sareferees.com/laws/law-book/

Now's the time to reboot

This forced sabbatical from rugby has led to much thinking about how the game should change when it gets going again. I’ve read some encouraging suggestions on how we can get back to the real spirit of the game, rejecting the commercially-driven rugby commodity that those who want to make money out of rugby have been forcing us to buy into.

Rugby has become a product and we are consumers, eagerly searching for the latest and the best. Not that they want us to ever find it. That’s the secret of consumerism – the customer is never quite satisfied, that way he keeps on looking for more, and paying more for it.

Take school rugby. The product that’s been developed and which is enthusiastically marketed by the online rugby media, is one of behemoth schoolboy players, superbly conditioned and skilled, playing for a limited number of “super” schools who all compete against each other, more or less. Even though there’s no national competition, rankings are drawn up and there’s no doubt that those schools play for the South African championship crown.

There has been talk of a national league being introduced and there are festivals at which those top schools play – those are the products, constantly being refined, that keep the consumers hooked. Winning is openly and unashamedly the dominant value and a blind eye is turned to all sorts of unethical and uneducational practices in the pursuit of success.

It’s a million miles removed from the original intention of rugby as part of an extra-curricular, enrichment programme at schools that’s meant to supplement classroom teaching, to instill certain healthy lifestyle habits and to guide young people in the formation of their outlook on life.

The thinking I’ve been doing while there’s no real rugby going on has been around how this forced break might be an opportunity to decide on what is really important and to reboot the system. Schools and educationalists should make those decisions, not the marketers and profiteers of the school rugby system that have emerged in recent years.

I may dreaming, I probably am, but I think there are many in education who will agree. When I speak to principals and coaches about these things, many of them roll out the old “Lance Armstrong” excuse, saying everyone else is doing it, so they too have to professionalise their approach to rugby. I know they know better – there are brilliant educationalists among them – but they feel trapped by the system, which is the system’s intention.

Let’s hit Ctrl, Alt +Delete and when we come back online let’s make rugby a school activity like it was meant to be again – educational, honest, ethical and community-based. Kick the marketers and their professionally packaged products into touch and let the boys enjoy the game at the appropriate level again.

Varsity Cup - efficient but not really satisfying

There's a fence outside the bar, under the pavilion at the Wits Rugby Club where I, and a good few other long-time supporters, have been watching Wits teams play for the last 40-odd years, or more.

That area is a no-go during Varsity Cup games. Try to stand there and the security will move you along - there's a sign they point you to saying you aren't allowed there and that's it.

That's an example, for me, of what's gone wrong in recent years with sport, including rugby.

Now, the Varsity Cup is a great competition, it breathed new life into club rugby, provided an alternate route into the professional game for players who didn’t shine as juniors and never went to the Craven Week and, most importantly, it made rugby accessible and popular among young black people.

Sadly, however, the competition lost its soul a bit when the unions began to see it as another feeder competition for their pro teams and sharp practices began to be uncovered. Some of the loopholes were closed, but it really isn’t the pure inter-varsity competition it was conceptualised to be anymore.

Still, I’m a Wits supporter, and I go along to their home games. I’m fortunate to have VIP tickets now and I’m well looked after, but I can’t stand in my spot of 40 years at the fence outside the bar any more.

Which brings me back to my point. I’ve been re-reading John McKnight and Peter Block’s The Abundant Community, which bemoans the way that communities have been replaced by systems and citizens are now consumers. It’s all driven by those who look for ways to make money out of us and while system living more efficient than community life, it isn’t satisfying. In fact we are intentionally kept dissatisfied, if we were ever satisfied we would stop buying. So they lie to us, and make false promises.

A feature of abundant communities are voluntary associations. The local sports club is one those. Wits Rugby Club is a type of community. The boys along the fenceline don’t live in the neighbourhood, but they are all associated – they are former players, alumni, parents of current or ex-players etc. We know each other by sight and some are friends, even if it’s only at Wits home games.

I’m thrilled, of course, that Wits did so well in the Varsity Cup this year. They were a shoe-in for the knockout phase when it was all brought to a halt by Covid-19, having beaten UCT, Tuks, UJ and Pukke and would have been great to see how they measured up against the mighty Maties.

For the fence community results are not the only thing, though. If they were we wouldn’t have carried on watching during some pretty lean years at the club. In fact, the only time we weren’t there was when rugby disappeared completely at the university at one stage. But we came back when it was revived thanks, among others, to the efforts of some wealthy old boys, a few of whom were regulars at the fence.

The Varsity Cup is brilliantly run. It’s well marketed and glitzy and a great night of boozy entertainment for the residential students. It’s a system, geared to consumers and the rugby is exciting and entertaining.

It’s efficient for sure, but for those who see Wits Rugby club as their community – and I’m certain there are similar old fogeys at the other varsities around the country too – it’s not entirely satisfying.

I’m wondering if, post Covid-19, when the money is less and big crowds are undesirable, we won’t see a resurgence of club rugby as a less efficient but more satisfying concept.

You can get The Abundant Community on takealot.com, when they start delivering books again.

Time to look at the two referees idea again?

I watched the 2014 UCT vs Pukke Varsity Cup final on Supersport’s Relive today – the most remarkable comeback to win you’re ever likely to see – but it was the 2-referees experiment that caught my eye.

The two in charge that night, Marius Van der Westhuizen and Cwengile Jadezweni, clearly had no idea how to handle it and seeing them both drawing a square in the air for the TMO at the same time was just embarrassing.

In those final frantic minutes Marius took over completely and JD disappeared, which was probably just as well, imagine if they made conflicting calls at that stage and UCT’s momentum was halted while they tried to sort it out.

The experiment was not repeated and there’s been no talk of it since. I do think it was a wasted opportunity, however, and much of the current refereeing mess could be sorted out by two officials, working in harmony according to a plan.

Little attention seemed to be paid to how the two would work together and how to divide their duties and responsibilities when the Varsity Cup experiment was introduced.

I was at the press conference when that year’s experimental laws were introduced – rubber studs on the jerseys of the props to improve binding was another one – and I asked what I thought was the obvious question: had the SA Referees Association sought advice from other games that have been using two officials all along? Basketball, hockey and water polo were the examples I gave. I was basically told to sit down and shut up, they have it all worked out, by Andre Watson who was there to explain the experimental law variations.

I concede that I had no right to interfere, but I still believe the idea of two refs is a good one, they just did it all wrong.

The key to those other games lies in the division of the field of play. In the Varsity Cup they divided the field into two by drawing a line between the centre of the two sets of goal posts. That meant both refs looked at attack and both looked at defence and nothing had changed except they both blew for the same offences generally.

I was a water polo referee for many years and at one time I was pretty well versed in the laws and interpretations of that game. The key to the interaction between the two referees there is that each one controls his particular zone of attack. He is in charge of what is called there and the other ref doesn’t butt in unless he sees a major foul (a penalty or a exclusion offence) that his colleague might miss. He positions himself in line with the last player in the backfield and has a wider angle view of the game from there. He is also well placed for the transition when possession changes hands.

The pool is divided into two diagonally, from corner to corner. Each refs is in charge of the sector to his right, which includes the whole of the goal-line on that side and none of the goal-line to his left.

Hockey and basketball are run much along the same lines.

Why didn’t they do that with rugby? Draw a line from corner flag to corner flag. Each ref runs an entire “red zone”, on attack or defence and the other one hangs back and watches off the ball including offsides (wouldn’t that be a good idea). The trailing ref can blow for penalty offences that are missed, but otherwise he defers to the ref in charge of that sector.

It’s not rocket science and it’s been worked out in detail in those other codes. We could have learnt from them, and the game would have been better for it, for my two cents worth.