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.

40 years on - who stands out in my schoolboy rugby memories?

At the newspapers they call the Christmas period the silly season. It’s that time of year when the papers are thick because of the extra end of year advertising that came in, but the news is thin because everyone was going on holiday. So, we’d fill those pages with reviews, “best of the year” lists and top 10s etc.

And that’s what’s going on now of course, with all sport suspended due to the Covid 19 virus, and the online media feeling obliged to keep updating their sites. TV, likewise, is supplying glut of replays of fabulous matches gone by.

I, as a compulsive bloviator, can’t resist joining in and I thought it would be fun (for me anyway) to look back on my 40-odd years of watching schoolboy rugby and draw up  a list of the best players I saw in that time.

It’s a dangerous undertaking, I know. There were many good players that I never saw play, and I only attended a specific type of school game – the Joburg English, or non-league schools, and a smattering of the Afrikaans schools at festivals and such. There’s also the issue of a fading memory.

So, here’s my completely subjective list for, what it’s worth.

1 Heinke Van der Merwe (Monument). He was the Monnas captain during a very successful era for the school and I remember one year reporting that he scored 13 tries for them, as a prop, and two more at the Craven Week. He played five Tests for the Springboks, but never really became established and went on to a long and illustrious career in Ireland and then France.

2 James Dalton (Jeppe). He turned out to be one our most successful international players. While his power and effectiveness as a Test player was amazing for someone who was relatively small, I recall that as a schoolboy he was regarded as huge. He was one of the first schoolboys to go full out on weight conditioning and it showed. He was undoubtedly the best schoolboy hooker I ever saw.

3 John Smit (Pretoria Boys’ High). Although he went on to play over 100 Tests as a hooker, he was a prop at school. Even then his leadership quality was evident and Boys’ High was a feared opponent, hardly ever beaten by any of the Joburg schools. He was a powerful scrummager, but also useful with ball in hand.

4 David Copans (Highlands North). Yes, I’m biased – I coached him – but “Oaf” as he was called - was devastating in the games we played. He was a big man, with great skills and unstoppable 10m from the tryline. He was an allrounder, one of the few local schoolboys who played for the province both at the Craven Week and at the cricket Nuffield Week.

5 Ivan Labotsky (Monument). You could pick any number of Monnas tight forwards from the 80s and 90s, but Labotsky is one who sticks out for me. He was massive, powerful and altogether intimidating on the field. And absolutely charming off it – quiet spoken, respectful and polite – as so many of the Afrikaans players I come across are. He was in the Transvaal team that won the main game at the 1989 Craven Week and I was surprised that he didn’t go on to play at a higher level.

6 Nigel Pickford (Jeppe). Out of position – I think he was an eigthman – but he was a Jeppe captain in the golden Jake White era and typified the type of rugby that those teams played, which was streets ahead of anyone else at the time. He was a great leader and a uncompromising forward.

7 Chesney Thomas (Highland North). Definitely out of position, but only because my No.8 is the best schoolboy player I ever saw. The oldest of the Thomas brothers – Lee and Gareth also played Craven Week – was in a class of his own at that time. He was regarded with awe by just about everyone involved in school rugby.

8 Johan Van Niekerk (KES). As I said, if I was pushed to name the best schoolboy I ever saw I’d have to say Big Joe. He went on to win over 50 Test caps and everyone could see that coming. He was a step ahead of all the others, strong, fast and intelligent. I wrote at the time that he would cross the advantage line every time he carried the ball, and he had the ability to do that at international level too.

9 Freddie Botha (Athlone). In the late 1970s and early 1980s Athlone Boys’ High was a dominant force in local schools rugby. They beat everyone, including Monument, and the Botha brothers, Freddie and Vic, were very much at the heart of their success. Freddie was a great scrumhalf and it was a travesty that he didn’t get selected for the province, but it was almost impossible to get the nod if you were at an English school in those days.

10 Jamie White (KES). He was stereotypical of the King Edward flyhalves in his period – smallish, elegant and highly skilled. He was an excellent distributor and was the catalyst for countless tries within the KES pattern of those days. I do recall that he was something special, however. He had a devastating break, usually saved for late in the game, and I remember him dropping one or two match-winning goals.

11 Jaco Louw (Linden). Someone asked on social media last week who the fastest wing you ever saw was, and for me it was Jaco Louw, without question. He scored many tries at school level and went on the play senior provincial rugby. He was too slight to go all the way to the top at a time when strength and conditioning was still quite primitive.

12 Wandesile Simelane (Jeppe). He was among the first of the new breed of black players who dazzled with his guile and footwork. He was the talk of the town in his matric year and made the SA Schools team. He was also a deadly accurate goal-kicker, something not many seem to remember these days. It’s just a matter of time before he really kicks in as a professional player and I believe he is a future Springbok.

13 Kennedy Mpeku (KES). One year younger than Simelane, but cut from the same cloth. As a schoolboy he had it all and was a key player in arguably the best KES side in 20 years. He also made the SA Schools team and will undoubtedly be heard of again.

14 James Moss (Parktown). He was probably not far behind Louw for pace and scored many tries for Parktown in what was a golden era for the team. He went on to play many games at senior provincial level.

15 James Small (Greenside). Although he would go on to become one of SA’s greatest ever wingers, James Small played fullback at Greenside. He was a top athlete at school and a gifted ball-player. He was a troubled youth, I remember, and it was his coach at Greenside, Deon Visser, a gifted man-manager who reached great heights in education, who kept him on the straight and narrow. Greenside played the big schools in those days, and they were competitive mainly because of James Small. He single-handedly won many games for them.

Looking at that list, I realise I have not done the more recent players much justice. I guess I’m too sentimental, or maybe it’s that Alzheimer’s tendency to remember the distant past more clearly than the recent.

Certainly loosies like Hacivah Diyamani, Travis Gordon and Evan Roos wouldn’t be out of place in that company. Neither would backs like Tyrone Green, David Carey or Madosh Tambwe.

But that’s how I remember them. Let’s pray that we’ll be making new memories this season still.

Let's get back to educational values - even if it means losing rugby games

There have been three fairly widely reported incidents lately that have fallen right into the lap of a serial whiner about the state of school rugby like me.

First there was the very dodgy granting of bursaries to primary schools players in KZN, then there was the BBC report on steroid use in our schools and now the story of 17 and 18 year-olds playing in the under-13 primary schools Craven Week.

Cleverer people than me have identified what you need to be a successful sporting team.

You need talented players, obviously, you need good coaching, you need good facilities and equipment and you need regular quality competition that allows you to test your players and systems against good opposition.

You would expect professional sporting setups to meet all those requirements. They are all important, and the 1^st two – players and coaching – are generally the difference between the champions and the rest.

In a school rugby context those things are not always guaranteed – not in the vast majority of cases anyway.

In the past schools took in their grade 8s and set about coaching them to be the best that they can. That applied to everyone you played against, and the playing fields were even. Coaching was usually the difference, and given that the available talent was quite randomly distributed it was accepted that even the best schools would sometimes have a poor year.

Greater exposure in the media (and I confess to have played a role in that); the introduction of satellite television with its hunger for 24 hours of sports coverage and then the advent of social media, meant that the results of school first rugby teams became national news. National rankings followed and winning became more and more important.

At around the same time the professionalisation of rugby at national and provincial levels trickled down into the schools. That was a good thing, rugby-wise, but the investment it required made winning even more important.

Of course you play sport to win, and schools have a duty to prepare their teams and players to have the best possible chance of winning. But to what ends do you go?

If you cannot meet the requirements for success, do you accept it and work hard at competing anyway, or do you do what it takes to meet them, even if it means cheating?

Schools are educational institutions, nothing more, nothing less. And educational values demand of them to be ethical and unscrupulously fair in all they do. If you don’t behave that way, you have no right to be in a position where you are influencing and moulding young people.

Once you make winning your dominant value, however, then you are saying that it supersedes educational values and you will do what it takes to win. It means if you don’t have the talent, you go out and buy it from other schools via bursaries and other financial incentives. Then you ensure that you have the best coaching by employing men who have experience at senior provincial level, paying them million-rand packages, at the expense of the parents or out of trust funds or donations which would be far better used in redressing the dire inequality that exists in our schooling system. Likewise, you spend millions on building facilities that are only used by a small sector of the school. And you stop playing your neighbours and design elite national leagues and festivals that include only those who think like you and are prepared to throw money at rugby like you do.

In the highly competitive world of recruitment you start signing up 11 and 12 year-olds, before anyone else can get hold of them. You turn a blind-eye to the gargantuan physical proportions of young players, pretending to believe the bogus birth certificates that indicate they are playing at the right age level. And, at worst, you encourage players to bulk up by using performance enhancing drugs or, at best, you turn a blind eye to that once-slight boy who has gained 10kg of muscle in a short period of time.

Probably worst of all, schools exploit the inequality and poverty that still exists in the country. A bursary to a good high school can be a way out for an impoverished family, and a Varsity Cup or provincial contract can lead to unimagined riches for poor black boys. In the name of transformation and diversity those sorts of players are targeted, and the talented ones are plucked away, and we are told it’s being done for altruistic reasons.

It’s easy to see how those poor families will fight tooth and nail for those opportunities. Is it surprising that some of them might manufacture birth certificates or that the boys may be tempted to take steroids in an attempt to get a foot in the door?

It’s all about winning, and attempts to justify what is going on as educational or child-centered personal development are dishonest.

The Lance Armstrong justification of “everyone is doing it” is quite common, and I’ve been asked what I would do to stop it. I can’t do a thing, except to carry on whingeing about it. But the principals of the schools can. They are responsible for everything that goes on at their schools (including the money spent in the name of the school by old boys and trust funds). They all have to say no more! And they have to mean it and act honourably from then on.

It's not impossible. It’s actually what they are being paid to do.