Standout memories from 40 years in school sport

The effective closedown of school sport during this Covid mess gave me the opportunity to trawl my memory and write down some of the things that have stood out for me during my lifetime of school sport. Some people have been kind enough to suggest that I collect them into a book. I've done that now, but I don't really know where to go next - I don't think it's something worth publishing, really, but I do think there are those who, like me, have a deep interest in sport as part of the educational process and who would like to read some of it.

So, until I decide what to do with it, I'm going to put a few bits and pieces up here and see what the reaction is.

Here's a chapter on some special memories.    

LOOKING back on my 40 years of involvement in school sport, there are some events and occasions that have faded into sketchy recollection. There were others, however, that were so extraordinary that they remain sharply etched in my memory. Part of my of my motivation for writing this book has been to get those things down on paper before they too disappear from my consciousness. 

Here are some that stand out from them:

1 Lee Barnard 

I’m sometimes asked what the best school rugby game I’ve seen was, and my answer is one from a time before I was a sports reporter, from before I was even a teacher.

I was on the No.10 bus going down Louis Botha Avenue on the way to my Orange Grove home from varsity one Monday afternoon in 1973 and I got off in Yeoville because there was obviously something going on at King Edward VII School.

It turned out to be their last rugby game of the season (and, I found out, they were still unbeaten at that stage). The opponents were Union High from Graaf-Reniet, who they played regularly in those days. Union were leading handily when I arrived, close to half time.

KES played downhill on their notoriously sloping field in the second half, and as far as I can remember they clawed their way back to be two or three points down, in injury-time, in the near dark, with their unbeaten record under serious threat.

Their flyhalf that day was skinny buck-toothed kid called Lee Barnard. He had been passing the ball along unselfishly all game and was hardly noticeable. Then, with time elapsed, for the first time in the game he went on a break, he threw two outrageous dummy scissors passes, and crossed over under the posts, untouched.

That day will be remembered forever at KES because Barnard’s action secured an unbeaten season for them. I will remember it because it was the day that I fell in love with schoolboy rugby.

2 The Paarl Derby

There is nothing quite like the Paarl Boys’ High vs Paarl Gimnasium rugby derby. First National Bank – the game was one of the FNB Classic Clashes then – flew me down there one year to experience it for myself, and it’s something I’ll never forget.

I went down a day in advance and got to feel some of the fever that infects the town for the entire week leading up to the Saturday afternoon 1^st team rugby game. The whole place is either two shades of blue or green and maroon, even the trees are bandaged in the colours of the respective schools. And there is no neutrality. Everyone declares their allegiance loud and clear, except for some of the retailers who don’t want to alienate their customers, and who festoon their doorways and their window displays in the colours of both schools.

It’s not just about the rugby games either. It’s a full on interschools week featuring golf, chess, hockey for boys and girls and netball for girls. Paarl Girls’ High joins in to play against the girls of the co-ed Paarl Gimnasium. There are also old boys games and games between the respective primary schools. I was told when I was there that there are even tractor races on the local farms, with the machines painted appropriately. We were never able to confirm that, though so it may be apocryphal.

On the Saturday the top four under-19 rugby teams meet, culminating with the firsts at 4pm at the Faure Street Stadium in downtown Paarl. The stadium holds 25 000 and it’s always packed to the rafters. It is, I believe, the biggest crowd to watch a schoolboy rugby game, anywhere. If they moved it to Newlands, they could probably double the numbers. I don’t think the people of Paarl would allow that, though.

3 Benny’s Sports Academy

One icy winter’s morning I travelled with the excellent PR people from Intune Communications to Louis Trichardt in Limpopo province to visit Benny’s Sports Academy.

Intune were doing the publicity for the Danone Nations Cup, an under-12 international soccer tournament and Benny’s were the SA champions that year. We went to see their preparations ahead of going to the the world finals in Paris in a few weeks later.

Benny’s Sports Academy sounds like a 1^st world centre of development where talented kids get top coaching and off the field support, but it isn’t. It’s a little school in a village called Tshiozwi, one hour outside of Louis Trichardt, which is about as rural as you can get.

And yet there’s greatness there, achieved on a gravel football pitch, in classrooms built out of handmade bricks, and by children fed by women cooking on open fires under a thatched shelter.

The school runs from grade 0 to 12, so they have a high school too and their under-19 team, along with the under-12s have been Limpopo provincial champions five times. In the case of the under-19 tournament that means they have won a total of R500 000 in infrastructure funding over the years. The money has been put to good use in developing the educational facilities, including a spanky new hall where we were served a great lunch prepared by the same women who cook for the kids each day.

They are battling there. One of the purposes of the visit, I found out, was to take the players food to supplement their diet. Danone filled a trailer with their products – yoghurt, Jungle Oats, energy bars and fruit juice – and bought a couple of crates of eggs on the way, to hand over to the school.

So how come they shine so brightly? It’s impossible to know from a one-day visit, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t come down to leadership. The school, it seems, is a hybrid private-public one. It’s a combined school run by the state, which pays the salaries of a handful of teachers in a small school like that, and allocates the meagre other funding that all schools get. The sports academy side is owned by David Mufumadi (nickname: Benny), a Louis Trichardt furniture store manager who funds it largely out of his own pocket. The principal is Sindane Nqobile, and between them they clearly run a tight ship.

The coaches are teachers and the teachers are dedicated and hard-working (the matric pass rate is over 90%). It’s an inspiring story, and well worth getting up early on a chilly morning to see.

4 Put your jacket on

In my teaching days I was deeply involved in swimming and water polo administration and, because I still wanted to be part of it when I moved on to the newspaper, I used to volunteer in my early years to cover the SA National Aquatic Championships. It wasn’t part of my job, but even then management cost-cutting meant that the Independent group never assigned someone to go to them, so my sports editor agreed.

That’s how I found myself at the nationals in Pretoria one year, with accreditation that got me into the prize-giving dinner at the end of the week.

They stopped having those dinners later on, there were too many incidents involving under-age drinking and bad behaviour as the swimmers – most of whom were still at school – over-celebrated the release of the pressure they were under.

The dress code for the teams was “number ones”: provincial blazer and tie and, for those who had been awarded them, national colours. The function was held in the ‘skilpadsaal’ at the University of Pretoria, and it was hot in there that night. So, most of the swimmers has taken their blazers off and draped them over their chairs.

There were speeches and a long procession of trophies being handed over. I couldn’t help noticing that just about every recipient would go up jacketless. Their blazers remained on the backs of their chairs, even those fabulous green and gold ones that they had worked so hard for and which, I’m sure, they didn’t get much opportunity to wear.

Then a young man at the table next to ours was called up. He stood, straightened his tie, put his Northerns blazer on and buttoned it up before he walked to the stage. He passed right next to me when he returned to his seat and I couldn’t resist grabbing his arm and asking him, “what school are you at?” His reply was “Pretoria Boys’ High”.

I must have nodded quietly to myself. That sort of action was always insisted on at all the boys schools that I’d interacted with. The swimmer – I regret that I can’t recall his name – was at Pretoria but he could have been at any of the other institutions where attention to the little things is important – it’s one of the ingredients of their ongoing success stories.

I saw that night at Tukkies that it doesn’t happen everywhere.

5 Making some noise

In 1998 Jorg Hoffman a German international swimmer and former 400m and 1500m freestyle world record holder was in South Africa to swim in the Midmar Mile (which he won) and John Wright, an Australian swimming coach who worked in Joburg for a while and who was something of a showman, got him to attend the Girls Schools interhigh gala at Ellis Park while he was here.

He also arranged for him to race against the girls. It was an 800m freestyle race. Jorg on his own took on a 16 x 50m relay team made up of the two fastest swimmers from each of the eight schools who were there.

The girls interhigh at Ellis Park was, in those days, the noisiest event in Joburg sport. The schools bring an allocation of spectators – there isn’t enough room for all – and they pack them in like sardines. The city council even used to bring temporary stands in from their other pools and fields to increase the capacity.

And those girls scream, as only they can do, non-stop for the entire morning. That’s in a normal year, you can imagine the decibel level during that Jorge vs the girls of Joburg race.

Hoffman was a bit of a showman himself, it turned out. He would slow down in the middle of each leg, allowing the schoolgirl to pass him and then put his head down and catch her at the end of the length. His tumble turns were stylised displays, he’d arch his legs theatrically at the wall and glide the first 10 or 15m of the next length, then repeat his cat and mouse game, every time.

The anchor leg for that 16-girl team was swum by a girl from St Mary’s. Her name was Joanne Shuttleworth and she was a proper swimmer. She had been a South African champion through the age groups and had already represented her province at senior national level. Jorg gave her his customary start at the beginning of that final leg while he did his dramatic turn and glide and, when he looked up she was halfway down the pool already!

He clearly realised he was in trouble and had to put in 100% to catch her. He did that right at the wall and the electronic timing device showed that he had won by a few hundredths of a second. Imagine the noise during that final 50m.

It was the most exciting swimming race I have ever seen outside, of course, of that mens 4 X 100 relay at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

6 James Small

In around 1987 I took my Highlands North 1^st team to play against Greenside. The late James Small was their fullback and he had quite a reputation. He was the star of the co-ed schools athletics scene and had helped Greenside to a great rugby season that year.

So, we had tried to make plans to contain him. We never had to use them, to start with anyway. He never joined the backline, he kicked the ball back to where it came from whenever it came to him and, otherwise, he was practically invisible. We were leading quite comfortably halfway through the second half and I remember asking my co-coach, sarcastically, if James was actually playing that day.

Then, with 10 minutes to go, he suddenly woke up and went beserk. He began running at us and we couldn’t stop him. He scored two tries and laid on two more and a 10 point lead for us became a 20 point defeat in the wink of an eye. 

My players told me later that the Greenside boys said that sort of thing had happened before – it depended on whether James had had a rough night before the game. He was a troubled youth even then, it seems.

It was the most remarkable display on a rugby field that I had seen in my days as a coach. James made the Craven Week team and SA Schools later that year and went on to become one of our greatest Springbok wings. We got a brief glimpse of that greatness at Greenside that Saturday morning.

7 They’re only children

In my days as editor of the School Sport supplement of the Saturday Star I felt I needed to run a weekly column by a coach. I tried out a few and Lucky Stylianou, the former Kaizer Chiefs player and youth coach, who was teaching at Saheti School was the one that stuck.

It was a stroke of luck for us. For the next five years he sent us an article very week and it turned out he was far more than a good technical coach, he was deep thinker about the role of sport in the development of children. His columns got a great response from readers. I know he has gathered the best of them into a book that hasn’t been published yet, it really should be.

One of the women who worked with Lucky at Saheti told me once that the problem with him was that, like most Greek men, he saw himself as a direct successor to the ancient Greek philosophers and he looked at the world though that lens.

I don’t know about that, but I do know that he has a philosophical, long-game view on winning and losing that resonated with me perfectly.

It was an incident involving Lucky as a coach some years before, that was one of the events that stands out in my school sport memories. It was at a primary schools soccer tournament at Crawford College in Benrose. Lucky was there with the Saheti team.

The final, between two other schools, ended in a draw and was still deadlocked after extra time, so in the gathering gloom, it went into a penalty shot out, as the tournament regulations stipulated. At the end of two rounds of spot kicks the scores were still even so it went into a third. By then the 12 year-old players were so emotional and nervous that the first four kicks were missed, and the fifth one didn’t even reach the goalkeeper.

Those children were clearly overwhelmed. Then an incensed Lucky stepped up out of the crowd. He called the boys off the field and told the organisers that it was enough. He reminded them that these were only children and told them if they had to award a cup, the teams could share it, but there would be no more penalties taken that day. They, somewhat shame-faced, agreed. 

It was quite remarkable. I became a Lucky Stylianou fan that day and it had nothing to do with the fact that he had played 250 games for Kaizer Chiefs.

8 Bryce Parsons

Bryce Parsons is the latest of a long list of stars to come out of King Edward VII School. I watched Adam Blacher play for them, and Nic Pothas and Vaughn Van Jaaarsveld, Graeme Smith, Neil Mc Kenzie and Quinton de Kock.

KES has been consistently the top performing cricket school in Joburg over the 40 years that I’ve been involved. There are pretenders to that title but they have some way to go to match their track record.

Bryce achieved more than most of those stars did while still at school, but then again he had more opportunities. He played SA Schools, he was named the Khaya Majola Week player of the week and the South African under-19 player of the year in 2018 and captained the South African under-19 team on its tour to India and in the home ODI series against Pakistan in 2019.

Out of all his achievements one innings stands out for me. It was at the 2018 Khaya Majola Week in Cape Town when he made 129 not out, off 115 balls against Northerns, at Bishops. I watched it from beginning to end and it was clear that this was someone to watch. 

He struck 10 fours and four sixes and together with Jacob Miltz, his captain, who made 60, they got their side to 258/3 in their 50 overs, which was always going to be too much for Northerns, who were dismissed for 177. The win ensured a spot in the “main game’ of the week for Central Gauteng and it cemented a spot in the SA Schools team for Bryce. 

He was majestic and controlled, he fed the strike to Miltz who was the senior partner in the beginning, and then cut loose when Miltz went out. It was an individual display that is etched in my memory.

9 Kelsey White

The Joburg co-ed schools A league swimming interhigh gala was another of those noisy, spirit-filled occasions when it used to be staged at Ellis Park. The old pool with its concrete amphitheatre had an atmosphere that lent itself to that. At some stage the Joburg City Council priced itself out the market, and the pool was no longer kept in good condition, so the gala was moved to the Delville pool in Germiston, where it is still staged now. For me, it’s not the same anymore.

It was at Ellis Park, however, that I witnessed an achievement that sticks it my memory. It was the girls open 50m freestyle race and it was won by Kelsey White of Rand Park High School.

Kelsey went on to play water polo at the highest level and was the captain of the SA team for a number of years, including at the World Championships in 2015. She has come out of retirement and is currently in Japan as part of the SA water polo team. She is the 1^st team coach at St Mary’s School in Johannesburg.

In her time at Rand Park the school became, for a short period, the top girls water polo team in the land.

The co-ed interhigh, because it features boys and girls in all the age groups, and because the gala has to be completed in half a day,  consists mainly of 50m races in all the strokes.

That afternoon Kelsey lined up at the outside lane at Ellis – Rand Park wasn’t one of the fancied schools so they were pushed to the side – against a field that contained top provincial swimmers from Northcliff and Bryanston.

Just over half a minute later she had won the race and the stars in the centre lanes were staring up at the electronic timing scoreboard in disbelief. There was nothing stylish about her swim, it was sheer power, she took one breath in the middle of the pool and swam the last five metres head up, water polo style. 

Over two lengths, the thoroughbreds would have smoked her, but over 50m they were outpowered. It was glorious to see.

 

Are there really no good under-18 rugby players outside of the Western Cape and Bloemfontein?

There’s been a bit of a stir about the composition of the 45-man under-18 squad that was named by SA Rugby last week. The group will be cut to 35 and it will be departing for Georgia on July 31st. Although it has been stressed that this is not an official SA Schools or SA under-18 team, it will, never the less be playing three “internationals” against the hosts.

Clearly, these are not usual times. The 2020 and 2021 school rugby seasons both did get going, but were both shut down soon afterwards. There was no Craven Week, or Grant Khomo Week last year and there haven’t been any this year either – although SA Rugby haven’t given up entirely on that yet.

Under those circumstances, you have to ask why such a squad was chosen at all. And you have to acknowledge that whoever was tasked with making the selection had no chance of doing it properly.

The thinking, I guess, is that we cannot afford to go into 2022 without a group of recognised elite junior players to make up the pool out of which the provinces can do their recruiting and from which the SA under-20s to play in the next World Rugby U20 Championship will be chosen.

There is, it seems, a good rugby relationship between South Africa and Georgia at the moment. They agreed to playing Test matches against us to prepare for the Lions tour and their under-20s were recently involved in a tournament in Stellenbosch featuring Argentina and Uruguay as well. It’s logical that, if they came here, we should go there in return.

So, there are all sorts of good reasons why that junior squad should be chosen, and one very good reason why it should not have been – it hasn’t been done fairly.

 There are seven boys from Paarl Gimnasium there, and six from Grey College. No problem with that, of course our top two schools will feature prominently – it would be that way in any year. There are a further nine Western Province players in the group and three from Oakdale Landbou – so more than half of the squad are from Bloemfontein and the Western Cape province. They are all good players, I’m sure, and some of them have come through SA Rugby’s talented players programme.

There are two players from the Lions, and two from the Bulls, and smattering from the rest of the country. Again, I know it wasn’t easy to select the squad at a time when no-one’s playing and yes, the schools from the South smashed their woefully underprepared Northern counterparts at the preseason Monument and Affies festivals. But doesn’t that mean there are no good players north of Bloemfontein.

I don’t believe you can use those pre-season results as an absolute yardstick. I've been watching the Joburg Easter festivals, in particular, for 30-odd years and my observation has been that the teams that go into them without a few preparation games under their belts almost always come off second best.

Rugby is a team game - individual stars don’t mean much if the team as a whole is disjointed and doesn’t perform the unit skills effectively. In short, you cannot play your first games of the season against some of the top schools in the land without a few warmups beforehand. That’s what happened back in April.

The schools from the South will probably have ended the season with the better records, if there had been one. And Western Province may well have dominated the Craven week, like they almost always do, but that doesn’t justify choosing such a significant junior team from the schools around Cape Town, and from Grey College, and casting everyone else aside.

There’s no way you can expect success in the future if you only consider half the country when you identify for the first time the best players from this particular generation. More importantly, the players in every corner of the land deserve the same opportunities, That’s clearly not happened here.

If it could not have been done properly then perhaps it should not have been done at all. 

Two Jeppe old boys in Springbok squad

Sbu Nkosi and Wandisile Simelane were included in the 41-man squad from which the Springbok rugby teams to play against the British and Irish Lions in July will be chosen.

Sbu is something of a Springbok regular - he has 11 Test caps - while Wandile will be making his first appearance at this level.

It’s just a matter of time before Wandi makes his first Test appearance. We are holding thumbs that it will be this time around,

Professionalisation of schools rugby - it's not a single story

 I got involved in a lively twitter debate on the issue of schools becoming rugby academies following a tweet from Jonathan Alexander Smith who quoted a blog by Timothy E Jarvis who, in turn, was quoting Allan D Miles.

I have great admiration for Timothy Jarvis and Allan Miles and eagerly await, and read, everything they post on their respective blogs, Theres’s a Hadeda in my Garden and Coach Talk.

I fully agree with what they say about the capture of schools rugby and the undesirable transformation of some schools into rugby academies. These are issues I’ve been on about for years and on which I’ve written extensively, in my days as a journalist, and in my own attempts to be blogger now that I’ve retired.

I hate twitter (and I love it). The problem is that you cannot have a real debate in so few words. You run the risk of making your point poorly, or of having what you said misunderstood. From then on, the conversation continues with you stuck in a box and with no way to speak your way out of it. It’s frustrating and that’s why you shouldn’t get into discussions on twitter. The reply function on twitter is the perfect tool for the narcissistic listener who is composing his response in his head before you have finished talking.

So, while fully agreeing with the views of those quoted on the negative aspects of a professional approach to rugby in schools, I pointed out that it’s not a single story (nothing ever is). What I wrote (probably a bit ambiguously) is:

“Good points but, as always, it's not a single story. Schools have a duty to prepare teams & players to compete in this new "pro" environment. There are principals and coaches who are great ethical educationists, Not all high performance systems are evil.”

My use of the phrase “pro” environment refers to the way in which teams and players are prepared nowadays in the highly competitive world of interschool rugby at the top level. It has nothing to do with producing players for the professional rugby game once they leave school. Of course it’s not the role of schools to do that and I would never suggest that it is. The chances of making it as a professional player are so slim that it’s actually very poor advice to encourage a young player to put all his efforts into it.

We need professional players. They are the ones we all love watching on TV and in the stadiums (in the good old days). Quality coaching at school level is necessary to put them on their paths, but it’s not the role of school rugby to produce players for the professional ranks.

The professional school rugby environment I’m talking about is managed by highly qualified coaches – technical experts, fitness specialists, sports psychologists, nutritionists etc. Teachers, typically don’t have these skills, so those roles are filled by people from outside the school, and they don’t come cheap.

For the boys involved, rugby becomes pretty much the only game they can play, and they practice almost all year long. Early specialisation, excessive exercise workloads and, sometimes, the use of performance enhancing substances, are the problems that are often found.

And it’s all driven by an over-emphasis on winning. Timothy and Allan have that exactly right in what they have written. No amount of professional coaching will bring you victory if you don’t have the right players, so recruitment becomes part of it, and it’s probably the greatest of the evils, akin (almost) to child trafficking.

When schools use the possibility of a career as a player to lure a promising youngster to their ranks they are being dishonest. They know they cannot guarantee that he will make it. No, it’s all about winning, and ensuring that there is a flow of good (and physically big) players coming through the age groups.

It is, however, not a single story. In my 40-odd years of closely observing schools rugby I’ve seen some pretty shady practices, and a lot of dishonesty. But I’ve also met great educationalists and philosopher coaches who have the interests of their players at heart.

I’m not arguing that the professionalisation of rugby at school level is necessarily the right thing. I am saying, however, that not every school that runs a professional rugby system is guilty of unethical and uneducational practices. And I’m saying that it is possible to run a sophisticated, super-efficient programme and still have the holistic education of the kids at heart.

That’s what great schools are all about. They have great people in them, and they are very successful in all that they do, including rugby. They treat everything seriously and do all they can to turn their learners into the best possible versions of themselves. They all have successful sporting programmes and all produce excellent academic results with near 100% pass rates and bucketsful of distinctions.

That’s not always the case, I know, and there are plenty of examples of where the obsession with winning overrides everything and things go wrong. Those schools are not among the great ones, in my view.

I don’t like the professionalisation of school rugby, just as I don’t like twitter, but there are no single stories.

It's Easter, but there's no Saints Festival this year and that's a great pity

The Easter rugby festivals were supposed to kick off on Thursday but Covid-19, for the second year in a row, has put paid to that. 

I was asked to write a history of the event for a feature the Saturday Star ran a couple of years ago and I've included it in my book (soon to be published, I dream) in a chapter on enduring school sport success stories.

I'm feeling nostalgic today, contemplating festival-less Easter weekend, so I thought I'd tell the story again, here as my Two Cents Worth. 

The other long term school sport success stories I've included in the book are: St Benedict's unbeaten rowing run; the growth of girls water polo; Northcliff High at the co-ed schools athletics interhigh; St Mary's dominance of girls sport in Joburg; the rise of soccer in our schools; the Craven Week; Grey College as the top rugby school in the land; King Edward VII School's all-round excellence; and Monument's dominance of rugby in this town.       

The St Stithians Easter Rugby Festival

In 1984 St Stithians College turned 30 years old and, as is customary when it comes to school anniversaries, it was decided to mark the occasion with sporting events to which their long-term friends and rivals would be invited.

Rugby is generally the cornerstone of anniversary celebrations programmes, so it was decided to hold a rugby festival over the Easter Weekend that year. It was supposed to be a once off occasion, but it grew into an annual event, morphing into what is now the Saints Easter Sports Festival, a multi-code long weekend involving boys and girls teams, and a primary schools rugby festival the week before. If it weren’t for Covid-19, 2020 would have been the 36^th edition of the event.

The people who came up with the idea were the then Saints headmaster, Mark Henning, the master in charge of rugby, Tim Clifford, and the chairman of the Parents Association, Colin Hall. They had different motivations. Apartheid’s grip on the country was strong in the 1980s, but there were some chinks of light and one of them was that private schools like St Stithians were enrolling more and more black learners.

It wasn’t a move that was welcomed by the rugby authorities. Those boys weren’t eligible for provincial selection, and schools with black players weren’t allowed to enter league competitions. Henning wanted all the boys in the school to be given every opportunity to perform, so he decided to use the idea of the festival to let the black payers who were at the formerly whites only schools an opportunity to shine on a bigger stage.

Hall was a top business man – he was a director of SA Breweries and the CEO of Woolworths, among other achievements – and he saw the festival as an opportunity to raise the profile of the school and get it noticed on the national stage, which would result in greater enrolments. Tim Clifford was a rugby man, he wanted to see the best schools and players play on the St Stithians field, and to test his team against them.

The first festival featured 10 schools: Alexandra High, Bishops, Capricorn, Kearsney, King Edward, Potchefstroom Boys’ High, Pretoria Boys’ High, St Andrew’s, St John’s and St Stithians.

The idea was to invite like-minded schools that shared a values-driven ethos and had a healthy attitude to sport and it was decided from the beginning that it would be festival of rugby. There would be no overall winner, no tournament team would be selected and no man of the match awards would be made. The idea was to match schools who didn’t normally meet during the season, so there would, as far as possible, be no derby games and no repeat fixtures from year to year.

Much was to change over the next 35 years, but those basic principles were not compromised. The festival is still there and it has grown, despite the changing school sports environment. The credit for accomplishing that can largely be given to one man, Piet van Tonder. He took over from Tim Clifford as tournament organiser in 1987 and by the time that he retired as deputy headmaster of the school in 2013, he had run 26 festivals, always sticking to the values that the first ones had been based on.

In 1984 South African sport was buckling under the weight of isolation. There was no international rugby and the Currie Cup was the biggest thing on the calendar. That competition only began later in the year and at Easter not even club rugby was properly under way in Joburg. So, not surprisingly, the Saints Rugby Festival caught the imagination of the rugby-loving public. Spectators turned out in force in those early years – it was the only show in town – although, to be honest, there have been decent crowds at the festival every year since, even when other events began to compete for the attention of spectators.

One of the unwritten rules of the event was that schools would be invited for two years at a time and then sit out. This was done so that the net could be spread and as many schools as possible could be involved. In the 36 years so far over 70 teams have appeared at the Saints Festival.

Having so many of the top players at the festival over the years has naturally led to quite a number of first class and international players who once played there. There have been 28 Springboks who played at the Saints Festival and four of them - Bob Skinstad (Hilton 1993/4), John Smit (Pretoria Boys’ High 1994); Schalk Burger (Paarl Gim 2000) and Warren Whitely (Glenwood 2005) – went on to captain the country.

Of the current crop of Springboks, Bongi Mbonambi (St Alban’s 2009), Sikhumbuzo Notshe (Wynberg 2010), Jason Jenkins (St Alban’s 2013) and Curwin Bosch (Grey High 2015) appeared at the festival.

It was just a matter of time before a success story like this was emulated and, not surprisingly, it was St Stithians’ big Joburg private schools rivals, St John’s who were next to organise a festival of their own, in 1996. King Edward, who had been a permanent fixture at the Saints Festival since its inception, and its biggest crowd drawcard, decided to excuse themselves for a year, in 2002, to celebrate the school’s centenary with an Easter festival of their own. It was such a success that they too decided to make it an annual event, the third one in Joburg.

Since then Easter festivals, and festivals at other times of the year, have sprung up all over the country and all are successful, showing that there are enough schools that play rugby that people want to watch.

But through it all, the Saints Festival continues to grow and flourish, a great long term success story.

 

The Martin Ledwaba story

There's been a massive response in the media - mainstream and social - to the departure of Martin Ledwaba from Jeppe Boys last week.

His story is an amazing one - here's a summary of it that I wrote for the 2020 Jeppe High School for Boys Magazine last year:

The term “Mr Chips”, referring to a schoolmaster who has been at a school for a long time has become rather over-used and is often conferred on men who don’t really match up to the achievements of the fictitious Latin teacher, Mr Chipping, who the name originally referred to.

Chipping, according to James Hilton’s novel, taught at Brookfield School for 48 years and was 73 when he finally retired.

Match those numbers and you deserve the greeting “Goodbye, Mr Chips” when you leave. Well, we are saying goodbye to Martin Ledwaba this year and he not only matches those figures, he has surpassed them. 2020 was his 50^th year at the school, and he turns 80 this year. Like Mr Chips did, he has seen four generations of boys from the same families pass through the school and, amazingly, he remembers the names of most of them.

Martin never occupied the post of teacher at the school, although he did qualify as a teacher in 2011, at the age of 71 – more of that later – but he was without question a great educator. He has had an enormous influence on thousands of Jeppe boys through the years and it is him, invariably, who they seek out when they visit the school as old boys later on.

His story has been told many times: he was employed as a cleaner, became an assistant in the science labs, began presenting an increasing number of lessons and stayed on long after retirement age as a valued member of the administrative staff. He filled the role of the venue manager for functions and events and of the keeper of the school keys – opening up at 4.30am each day and locking up when the last person has left at night and he has tidied up and packed everything away, sometimes at midnight.

Just how all of that came about is a fascinating story on its own. In short, it goes like this: Martin attended a mission school in Polokwane and left at the end of grade 10. He came to Joburg with his friend, Jones Mathane who was brought here by a Mr Stone, the science teacher at the mission, who got a job at Athlone Boys’ High, first, and then at Jeppe. He trained Jones to help him the labs and when he left for another school he took him with him.

So, there was an opening at Jeppe and, having heard about Martin, some teachers went to fetch him from the men’s outfitting store in Orange Grove where he was working. “The head of the science department was Mr McCloud, but he was on long leave and it was Mrs Brand who fetched me and gave me the job,” Martin recalled.

“That was in February 1971 and they put me on trial at first, eventually employing me full time in June that year,” he said. Appointing a black man in a classroom position wasn’t allowed at that time, of course, and he didn’t have a matric, so he was officially hired as a general worker. But he worked in the labs, setting up and demonstrating the experiments. The duties of opening and locking up and running functions were added on later so that he could earn more.

Martin had a thirst for knowledge, he would listen to the lessons that his experiments formed part of and, within a few years he was teaching the entire lessons to the classes.

“As I became an expert the boys began to respect me. I would help them and I built relationships with them. That has never changed. The Jeppe boys have always been kind to me, and have treated me with respect,” he said.

In 1975 he enrolled at Damelin to complete his schooling and over the next 13 years, one subject at a time, he eventually finished it. “I mostly taught myself,” he said. “But there were teachers who helped me in certain subjects. Mr Taffy Jones, who was retired by then, but stayed in the hostel, used to mark my assignments for me before I submitted them.”

In 1989, he matriculated and could be appointed lab assistant, although he had been doing the job for 18 years already. He wasn’t finished studying, though. In 1994 he started a National Diploma in Education through Unisa. He had to do the reading late at night when he had finished his work, as was the case with his matric, so it took him quite a few years, but in 2011 he graduated and was a qualified teacher – a job he had been basically doing for years already.

“I was 71 then, and too old to teach all day,” Martin said. “But that didn’t matter, qualifying was something I wanted to do and I showed that you are never too old to learn.”

At around the same time he stopped working in the labs but carried on his other duties and became an elder presence around the school, revered and respected by the teachers and learners and fondly remembered by four generation of old boys.

In 2003, when he officially retired from the Education Department, the school’s front steps were named the Martin Ledwaba Stairs. They are a monument to the role he played at the school.

We would have loved to have Martin Ledwaba here forever, but he deserves to rest now. He departs as a highly appreciated and deeply honoured man. He will be missed.

Goodbye, Mr Chips.

At Jeppe they name things after people

The news was received at Jeppe High School for Boys a few weeks ago that Dave Watson - an old boy and former parent - had succumbed to Covid-19.

Visiting staff and coaches to the school will all know that they are received and entertained in the Watson Pavilion, above the main rugby field. It was built with funds donated by Dave Watson and named after his late son.

They love naming things after people at Jeppe. Just about every structure has a name plate on it. It's a way of honouring past contributions and acknowledging present ones. There are the Martin Ledwaba stairs, for example, named after the legendary cleaner, turned lab assistant, turned teacher, turned school elder, who is leaving the school this year, aged 81, after 50 years of service.

Here's a column I wrote in The Saturday Star in 2010 about the unveiling of the Watson Pavilion and the naming of things at Jeppe.

Adriaan Strydom passed away a few years ago. I first met him in 1974. I  miss him. 

 A few weeks ago I attended the official opening of the new pavilion overlooking the rugby fields at Jeppe High School for Boys.

 It's a magnificent facility and it will be called the James Watson Pavilion, in memory of a boy who played first team rugby in 2000 and was headboy of one of the school's hostels. He was tragically killed in a motor car accident in 2005.

 He achieved some dubious fame in 2000 when he was airlifted to hospital after injuring his neck in a match against King Edward, and I remember writing at the time of how impressed I was at the professionalism with which the incident was dealt.

That whole affair must have been reassuring to parents concerned about their sons playing rugby.

The new pavilion is another example of how seriously sport is taken at Jeppe. When James's father Dave came with an offer to donate money to the school in his son's memory, the idea of creating a facility to benefit everyone in the sport was born.

Apart from the viewing deck up top where the dignitaries will sit, the building has new change rooms, toilets and a tuckshop. James's mother Jill had a lot to do with the design and she insisted that mothers who serve refreshments at matches are given a convenient and comfortable area to work in.

The opening ceremony was a dignified affair, and very touching.

Sport has always had a certain sentimentality about it. That's one of the things that makes it appealing. Sportspeople like to name things after people; it somehow gives a sense of permanence to those fleeting moments that enthralled us all.

As I stood on the deck of the James Watson Pavilion, I looked down on Jeppe's main rugby fields: Collard Field on the right and White Field in the left. Jack Collard and Jake White were the two most successful coaches in the school's rugby history - Collard in the 1950s and '60s when Wilf Rosenberg and Des Sinclair wore the black-and-white, and White in the '90s, when Jeppe ruled the Joburg roost.

We all know what White went on to achieve, while Collard stayed at the school until well after retirement age and had a profound influence on the lives of thousands of young men.

To the left of the new pavilion, above the astroturf hockey field - named after former coach Warren Boden -  is a hill called Collard's Folly. It is made up of the sand and rubble that was removed to level the area when those rugby fields were first laid.

Collard's idea, apparently, was to put cricket nets up there and have the boys practice with the best view in Joburg. Unfortunately, he never reckoned on the pile subsiding so the net surfaces cracked and eventually disappeared - hence the name of the hill.

My old friend Adriaan Strydom, as loyal an old boy, ex-parent and supporter of Jeppe as any school could have, tells me there is also a Jake's folly. While he was the coach at the school, White decided it would be a good idea to create an area for the exclusive use of the first team to warm up in - an early sign of the sort of attention to detail and player-centric attitude that was to bring him so much success later on.

So, an area was cleared below the old swimming pool, but it turned out to be too small for the backs to run their moves on, and it was too much out of the way. So it is now a weed-choked patch of ground called Jake's Folly. It's still out of the way, but as the shadow of Collard's Folly fell across Collard and White fields that afternoon, it could be clearly seen from the deck of the new James Watson Pavilion.