Three highlights as the term draws to a close

 

My sporting highlight of the weekend? ….. Surprisingly, seeing it’s mid-year exams time and there’s not much school sport going on, there are quite a few things to enthuse about.

On Friday – Youth Day – I watched Jeppe play a football match against a St John’s Academy team. I wondered about that at first, surely St John’s aren’t running a football academy at their school? But I learnt it’s not that at all – St John’s runs academic enrichment classes for the top students at the, mainly inner-city, schools that surround them. Mr Mickey Mashego, one of the men who teaches in it, realised that, seeing the boys are at St John’s three afternoons a week and every Saturday, they don’t play sport at their own schools, or anywhere else. So, he started a football programme, and organises games for them, including Friday’s. He refereed the match, and because it was Youth Day, he called the players together before the game and got them to reflect on the sacrifices that were made in the past so that they could get the opportunity to play a game in that magnificent setting.

It was a cold day, but a heart-warming occasion to be at.

It was as cold on Wednesday night when St Benedict’s 1^st hockey team beat St Stithians 2-0, in the last game of the season. Saints have had a great year – they won the Aitken Cup and were about to make history as their school’s first unbeaten team. I confess to having a mean streak – I don’t like unbeaten runs. Maybe its because as a player and a coach I hardly ever broke the 50% win mark, never mind had an unbeaten season. So, while St Stithians were clearly the best side around this year, I was a little bit pleased for Bennies.

Then, thanks to SuperSport Schools, I was able to experience two of the top five schools rugby derbies in the country. Both were thrillers, both won by three points. In a reverse of the first meeting this year between Hilton and Michaelhouse, Michaelhouse weathered an all-out attack on their goal line in the closing minutes to win 18-15; while Kingswood College beat St Andrew’s 13-10 in a tense clash on K-Day – the big Grahamstown derby day.

SupersSport Schools sometime struggles for consistency it its productions. The camerawork and commentary in Grahamstown was brilliant, not so much at Hilton. But, production quality is not their main value, I’m sure, and I know they will get better (it is their first year, after all). If anything, the helter-skelter camerawork, and the over-excited commentators, at Hilton ramped up the drama even more.

K-day was ranked in a poll run by SA Rugby Magazine a few years ago as the 2^nd biggest derby day, behind the Paarl derby. The top five derbies listed in that poll were: 1 Paarl Gimnasium vs Paarl Boys High, 2 Kingswood College vs St Andrew’s College, 3 KES vs Jeppe, 4 Bishops vs Rondebosch, 5 Hilton vs Michaelhouse. I’ve been to three of those in person – Paarl Boys’ vs Paarl Gim; Bishops vs Rondebosch and KES vs Jeppe. Now I’ve experienced the other two, thanks to the wonder of live streaming.

That’s a wrap of interschool sport for now – big interprovincial hockey and rugby up next.

Partners for possibility, a history you can't erase

One of the highlights of my life as a taker of notes and teller of other people’s stories was the six months I spent on the road with Louise van Rhyn, travelling around the country to visit schools and speak to the people who ran them.

An abiding memory will be the closeness of the bonds between the principals and the businessmen and women who were partnering them. A principal stood with her hand on the shoulder of her weeping business partner who was mourning the loss of her mother; a prominent business leader took his principal to the opening of parliament as his ‘plus one’; and a principal, once crippled by shyness was described as ‘presidential’ by his partner – her eyes shining all the while.

And we saw what was possible when good people put their minds to it. The children at a tiny school in the middle of nowhere participate in a mountainbiking programme designed for the poshest of private schools – because the business partner asked the man who runs it to; pregnancy among the teenagers at a township school dropped to zero, while in the streets around it the numbers were out of control; and an army made up of the friends and relations of a business partner who was tragically killed, took over his role and are still working with that school.

We saw things you wouldn’t believe were possible, and they happened because people stood up and partnered with each other.

And everywhere we went people were just so delighted to see Louise. I realised that she was the force behind it all, along with the leaders of the local circles that she somehow inspired to do the impossible too.

That's what it was – Partners for Possibility. It wasn’t a programme concocted in a lab. The lives of  many thousands of children were changed for the better and a thousand schools changed from dysfunctional to functional.

It’s a history that can’t be erased.

The Golden Lions selectors have cast the net a little wider this time

 

My sporting highlight of the week? ….. The Golden Lions rugby teams for the upcoming Youth Weeks were announced and I was delighted to see that the net was spread a little wider this time around.

Last year this time I bemoaned the fact that of the 115 boys named in the five squads of 23, 93 percent came from five schools - Monument (25), Helpmekaar (23), Noordheuwel (20), KES (19) and Jeppe (19). That’s out 40 rugby-playing schools in the province.

There’s still an imbalance in the Craven and Grant Khomo teams, which you’d expect, but in the Welpies (U17 and U16B) teams, the selectors have resisted the temptation to pick the rest of the boys from the top five who were at the trials – like they did last year – and have given some others a look-in.

So, this year 73 percent of the 115 selections are from five schools – Helpmekaar (22), Noordheuwel (19), KES (19), Jeppe (16) and Monument (14). Parktown (1), Linden (1), Allen Glen (1), Dinamika (2), St Stithians (2), St David’s (1), Marais Viloen (6), Northcliff (6) and St John’s (4), all have representatives as well this year.

You can work out from that list, I guess, the schools that some of the selectors are at – I’ve been on those panels and that’s how it works. That’s not accusing them of bias, rather it’s a case of their players having someone to nominate them in the first instance, and then to speak up for them and not meekly allow the big schools to steamroller their way in every position that’s discussed.

The game is in trouble at schools. That number of 40 rugby-playing schools I mentioned earlier used to be over 100 back when I was in the game, and some of them are just clinging on. For schools like that to be able to announce in assembly that they have a provincial player is very important. It may just keep the game alive there for another year. That’s more important that swelling the tally of the big five schools, allowing them to recruit more talented players next year.   

Not that I don’t have a problem with the composition of those top teams. Monument has eight in the Craven Week side. Jeppe, who beat them, has two. In the U16 Grant Khomo team there are eight from Helpmekaar, who have a very good team this year, I hear. But so do KES. They only have three representatives and I can tell you there are many more very good players than that in their team.

 Still, there seems to be a realisation that there are more than just five rugby schools in the region, and that’s a good thing.

 

A good day at the school on the hill

 

 

My sporting highlight of the week? …. I spent Saturday at Pretoria Boys’ High and was, as always, blown away by the beauty of the campus. It was old boys reunion day there and I saw the place referred to as “the school on the hill” several times. It is, and it’s a spectacular hill. The buildings and grounds are sprawled across it, surrounded by forests, with ponds and wetlands dotted around. Parts of that forest have been allowed to remain the way they have always been, which is special, and if you stand down by the Astro you can see the domes and rooftops of the 100 year-old buildings peeking through the woods. It’s magical.

A school is about people more than it is about grounds and buildings, however, and those are special too. I must have been greeted by every boy there and at one stage an entire stand full of spectators stood up as I walked by – you don’t see that every day.

The cherry on top of the cake was running into old friends. I met Paul Anthony back in the early 1980s when we were masters in charge of swimming at our respective schools – we once spent a memorable day together in Cairo, of all places, when we were both in transit on our way back to South Africa on Egypt Air.

It was just a few years later that I met Paul Phipps. He was coach of the Parktown Boys’ 1^st team then. We had a great catchup on Saturday and he told me he is retiring next year after 31 years at Boys’ High!

Great grounds, great buildings, well-mannered boys, good men. I hit the highway back to Joburg at the end of the day feeling uplifted.

Saints end Jeppe's Aitken run

 

My sporting highlight of the week?  …… The Aitken Cup hockey final, without a doubt. St Stithians won it in a one-on-one shootout after the scores were locked on 2-2 at the end of normal time. In doing so, they ended Jeppe’s run of consecutive wins – six – and they took the title for only the second time in their history, the last time being in the 1970s.

Those who know hockey better than I do were saying that it was a high quality encounter, I do know that it was a thriller. Jeppe were clinical in the opening two quarters and went into a 2-0 lead before Saints pulled one back just before half time, they equalised in the fourth quarter and defended heroically as Jeppe went all out for the winner.

That led to the dreaded one-on-ones – a terrible way to decide a game like that, but surely one of the most exciting spectacles in sport. It was always going the be a lottery, particularly as it played out in the near-dark after the generator failed a few minutes into load-shedding.

Both sides missed attempts before Saints held their nerve to take the win.

The result was not all that surprising really. Jeppe scraped home in last year’s final between the two sides last year, and Saints won the school fixture a few weeks later. A significant number of that team are back again and St Stithians were the favourites going in. They were worthy winners in the end, if only just.

Earlier in the day Jeppe won the U16 and U5 Alan Monk and Boden Trophy finals, so their first team was going for the treble. They missed it by the narrowest of margins.

This year was the 50^th anniversary of the competition and Trevor Aitken, the man who the competition was named after, was there to present the cup, as was Alan Monk who handed the U16 Top 8 trophy to the Jeppe captain.

It was a great day and the good sportsmanship on display was wonderful. I particularly enjoyed the way the Saints players went across to commiserate with the Jeppe goalkeeper after he let that final goal through.

Stop the game when the winning margin gets out of hand

 

My needle’s sticking again, I’m afraid.

I saw the scores from the Potchefstroom Gimnasium vs Paarl Gimnasium rugby games on Saturday and I can’t help myself.

There were five results published. The average scoreline is 75-3; Paarl won the first team game 83-3, and the U16As 97-3. The comments on Facebook were the expected mixture of those who (like me) who believe that a fixture like that is an abomination, and those who see nothing wrong with it, or even believe it’s a good thing.

 My view is that anything that happens at a school has to be educationally accountable, and there’s nothing educational about allowing scores in rugby matches to reach those numbers. Education is about learning things that help children grow and develop into good adults, and that’s a much about building character, kindness and humility as it is about building strength, acquiring skills and accumulating knowledge.

 Allowing a team of children to be humiliated, discouraged and possibly injured, during a rugby game, while at the same time allowing the other team to bully them, to gloat and to assume an air of superiority, is not educationally accountable, and that applies to both teams.

 Apart from all the other damage that’s being done, it’s bad for the future of the game. The good thing about being a writer who is a stuck needle on a record, is that you can go digging on your computer and find what you wrote before. I sounded off on this topic in 2017, 2018, and again last year. Here’s what I wrote in 2018 after seeing scores similar to those in Potchefstroom on Saturday:

 

 You’ll remember that last year a team that won 221-0 posed in front of those numbers on the scoreboard and the photo was posted on the school’s Twitter and Facebook sites. I commented at the time that it was as sickening as those pictures that you see of so-called hunters posing over the carcasses of slain lions or elephants that had been chained to stakes. I have the same nausea again today, and it’s an appropriate comparison, because rugby players who are willing to turn out for the lower teams in the junior age groups are rapidly becoming an endangered species and we should be doing all we can to conserve them, just like we should be looking after those magnificent wild animals.

 

One of the comments on the Gimmies scores post referred to the fact that the Potch teams had travelled 1000 km to play a rugby game, so they should be allowed to do so for the full match time. Well, you have to ask how the fixture ever happened. Apart from the fact that the two schools adhere to the custom, coming from our Dutch colonial past, of calling high schools gymnasiums, I wonder if they have much in common, and those responsible for arranging that 1000-km trip surely knew beforehand what the results were going to be.

 Rugby, in this instance, is a vehicle for a range of lessons taught and learnt. Going on a rugby tour is about a lot more than the hour-long match against the opposing school. The paperwork and arrangements required when a team goes on tour is a mammoth task, made ever more difficult by the red tape that the education department requires. If so much trouble is being gone to, and if the parents are paying the sorts of tour fees that they are, then it had better be about more than just the hour-long matches played.           .

 No, its also about travelling across the country in a bus, with your team mates, and all the socialisation and sprit building that happens on that bus. It’s about being hosted by a family in the town you are going to and having to interact with your opponent the night before the game, and at breakfast in the morning; it’s about seeing and experiencing a school that is different to yours; it’s about your manners, and showing gratitude towards those have offered you hospitality and thanking the teachers who went with you and made it all happen.

 And it is about the game you will be playing there, but not only it. So, if the game has to get called early because it’s a mismatch and not in anyone’s educational interests that runs its course, then so be it. That act itself can be a lesson, to both teams. It doesn’t make it all a waste of time and money, all the other important lessons are still being taught.

 Rugby games between children should be called off when the score starts climbing rapidly and the opponents are unable to stop that from happening, every time.   

Another top 10 in 2022

 

I once heard former Springbok coach Nelie Smith say that when he was a Springbok selector, once they had chosen the Bok team, they would pick another team from the players left out that could quite possibly beat their selection – and then relook at their choices.

In that spirit, and because my recent blog listing 10 schools sport highlights that stood out for me in 2022 got quite a nice response, here are another 10 that could well be better than my originals.

In chronological order:

1 In March there was a function at Jeppe to mark the end of Mike Bechet’s reign as 1^st team cricket coach. He was in charge of 1033 1^st team games in all, at Jeppe and Maritzburg College. He was the epitome of an old-school teacher-coach: stern, uncompromising and altogether ethical. But ever-caring about the players in his charge.

2 In May the racing lanes at Roodeplaat Dam were completely cleared of Water Hyacinth. It took a massive effort by the rowing community, over many months to get there. There was talk at one stage that there will never be rowing there again, yet in November the Gauteng Champs were held there. Quite amazing!

3 I attended the Golden Lions Craven Week capping ceremony in June. The team captain, Xander Schoeman, and the Lions senior provincial captain, Reinhard Nothnagel made speeches. They are both Monument boys and it showed. Their talks were based on the solid values you need to succeed as a rugby player, and as a man. They say good people make good rugby players – these two will go a long way.

4 The Craven Week was on again and the “final” was as good as any I’ve seen. Western Province beat the Blue Bulls 29-21 in a great advert for the game. It was WP’s 6^th “title” in 11 years and their stars, for a change, came from Southern Cape Town, not from Paarl.

5 At that same Craven Week, King Edward’s Thabang Mphafi was selected for the SA Schools side. He was the captain of the KES 1^st team and the school’s deputy head boy. He was at the school on a TAG Foundation bursary and would probably not have reached those heights if he had stayed at school in Welkom, where he came from. I’m not a fan of recruitment of rugby players by schools, but some programmes are more than just about results. TAG is one of those.

6 In July I watched the Jeppe vs Parktown derby. It’s Parktown’s centenary in 2023 and their theme is that they are not done yet. Jeppe won the hockey and rugby games quite comfortably, but they lost the spirit-in-the-stands war, and I’d say the politeness and charm of the boys on the day contest ended even. From what I saw Parktown is certainly not done yet.

7 The St David’s Challenge Cup football tournament was back in August. Norkem Park were beaten 1-0 by Jeppe in the final, but they made lots of friends over the weekend. It’s a development success story, a school programme supported by the community that it’s in, attracting talent and providing top coaching. The boys sang and danced and added energy, and they just never went away, in any of their games.

8 The very next weekend, St David’s hosted its Time Cricket festival and, this year, the teams played two two-day games each. St David’s director of cricket, Dave Nosworthy, is adamant that cricket skills and tactics are best taught in longer forms of the game and that the obsession with limited overs cricket is detrimental to the development of good players. You can’t argue with that.

9 In September there were three St Stithians old boys – Kagiso Rabada, Wiaan Mulder and Ryan Rickelton – in the South African cricket side that played England. Saints continues to breed international players – there is one in the current Ireland team and there was another in the Holland team that dumped us out of the T20 World Cup. Only one of the three is in Australia at the moment. Perhaps the other two should have been too.

10 Vlado Trninic coached the Gauteng U19 boys team to victory at the SA Schools tournament in December. It was his last provincial assignment. A few weeks before, at the province’s capping ceremony, a procession of the players he has coached at Easterns, St John’s College, OJ Eagles and Gauteng paid tribute to him. They included many internationals. The remarkable thing was that, almost to a man, they spoke of the impression he had made on them outside of the pool more than about what he taught them in it. That’s the mark of a good coach. He’ll be missed.