Under 14 is not too soon to go on tour

I remember a time when schools wouldn’t let their youngest teams – U13 then, U14 now – go away on sports tours. The feeling was that touring was a privilege reserved for the 1^st team, something the others should aspire to.

The little ones, it was believed, should concentrate on learning how to play the game (s) first, and that was best done without exposing them to the pressure of playing games at out of town schools. I agreed with that thinking then – part of me still does – do 12 and 13 year-olds really have to be playing on a national stage before they have got the basics down?

But, those were different days, I concede. Sport at the schools that take it seriously is way better organised now, the level of coaching is on a whole new level and the stakes, at 1^st team level, are higher than they have ever been. Anyone will tell you that the degree of success you achieve at senior level is directly related to the quality of your junior programme.

So, U14s began playing across the country too, on a limited scale at first, increasing year by year until we have what took place at Jeppe this weekend past: U14 basketball and water polo festivals so big that they needed three and four days to complete them, involving just about all of the like-minded schools around the country. It was the 25^th year of the U14 Ken Short Water Polo Festival – with the Covid interruptions; while the U14 Basketball Festival has been going for eight.

I was at Jeppe for all of those four days and I came away realising that we weren’t completely right all those years ago and that festivals like these can be a very effective tool in teaching players just starting out what the games they have chosen are all about, on and off the field.

Probably the most important thing, though, is that the two Jeppe events are festivals, not tournaments. They used to be tournaments, with knockout round and finals, and tournament teams used to be chosen, until the headmasters of the schools who play in them agreed that all of that be stopped and that they be played as festivals in which, while the results of matches should matter to the teams involved, they have no greater significance than that.

I’ve taken some flak in this space for condemning an early-season under-14 polo tournament held at a local school where there was a winner, and for speaking out against the SA Schools tournament where they now go down to U12 level – 11, 12 and 13 year-olds playing fully competitive interprovincial sport! Those are things that have no place in educational sport.

And that’s what it is and has to be – educational. There’s where the benefits of playing in a more non-competitive atmosphere kick in. Basketball and water polo are similar games in a number of ways, one of which is that they have biggish game-day squads, but relatively small numbers of players on the field at any one time. At this level, you are unlikely to have a full squad of players who are on the same level, skills-wise, so the temptation, when the result is vital, will be to keep your best players in the game while the rest of the squad warms the bench. That’s flat out not allowed at the Jeppe festivals, and the coaches buy in to it. How are the weaker players going to improve if they don’t get game time? That’s the educational value of a festival.

Then there are the number of matches played in a short space of time. The players get to try out what the coaches tell them, almost straight away. Not that there aren’t gaps between games. That’s when the boys get to hang out together. I spotted them sitting in the shade of the trees and in the marquees at Jeppe throughout the weekend, talking trash and roughnecking – being boys, in an age when doing that is somehow frowned on. Multiday events like these create those opportunities and it’s there that team spirit is built; friendships are cemented and socialisation lessons are learnt – the things that turn those U14 teams into good 1^st teams in four years’ time.

And I haven’t even mentioned the interaction between the coaches and the massive efforts put in by a horde of officials and volunteers to make the two events run smoothly and finish dead on time despite losing all of Saturday afternoon due to the inevitable Highveld thunderstorm.

So, while I do sometimes miss the innocence of a more amateur time in school sport, I saw enough at Jeppe last weekend to convince me that, the way they went about it, they have got it right and that U14 is not too soon to tour.

A perfect way to end the season

 My sporting highlight of the week? ...... I came across this from one of the Jeppe parents:

Jeppe and St David's 3rd cricket teams met on Saturday. The game's not so deadly serious at those schools, at that level, and this was their last match of the season - and ever, for the matrics who were playing.
Jeppe, batting second, were cruising and need six runs to win, with a bit of a trundler bowling and the facing batsman shaping to knock it out of the park (who wouldn't want to, under the circumstances). Then he was approached by the St David's captain who asked him not to. He intended giving one of the matrics in the team the next over. It would be the last time he bowls for the school, he said.
The next ball was a dolly, but the batsman blocked it. The matric got to bowl his over and Jeppe reached the target soon afterwards, but cricket, and the spirit of sport, won the game. Marvellous!

My sporting highlights of the week - the guts of Dricus du Plessis and the efforts made by teachers to hit the ground running.

 

My sporting highlight of the week?

Well, it has to be Dricus du Plessis, I guess. I, like many others, am suddenly a UFC fan although I have to confess that I know absolutely nothing about the sport – I actually was a bit alarmed at what the fighters are allowed to do – but there’s no denying the nation-building effect of these isolated world championship victories. And, I think that if any coach wants to show his players what he means when he tells them to show some old-fashioned determination when things aren’t going to plan, he could do worse that play them a clip of those last two rounds – the guts that Dricus showed was remarkable.

It was the first weekend of school sport and despite the fact that they only went back last Wednesday, there was plenty of action. I was at the water polo at St John’s on Saturday. There were five games in two days for the 1^st teams, to get them back into the swing of things, in their new indoor aquatic centre. It was my first time there and it’s a world-class facility. The trouble and expense that some schools in this country go to so that children can play sport is quite amazing.

On Sunday I was at cricket at Jeppe – there were matches at many schools on Saturday – but this one, against Potchefstroom Volkskool is traditionally on a Sunday, for some reason. Two Jeppe teams made the trip to Potch and two from there came across to Joburg. Once again, the effort that the school teachers go to to let the children play sport amazed me – it’s my year-opening highlight, every year.

The Springboks ruined the narrative, and they don't like that up North

 

Warren Gatland’s utterings on how the game of rugby should be changed to save it have got quite a response.

His suggestions aren’t all bad – the return of a 5m scrum when an attacking player is held up over the tryline, for example, I agree with – but, along with many others, I believe that his thinking is largely founded on bitterness and frustration. The domination, once again, of the Southern Hemisphere teams and the success of the Erasmus/Nienaber deep-thought approach to tactics and their canniness in gaining an edge by using the laws of the game in a way that the others haven’t thought of, wasn’t what was planned for.

There’s an analysis of his suggestions on the Planet Rugby website that unpacks just how he hopes to take away that edge https://www.planetrugby.com/news/warren-gatland-thinks-up-two-radical-ideas-which-would-take-away-the-springboks-tactical-weapons

I have to concede that sometimes I go a little ‘conspiracy theory’ around the edges, especially when it comes to World Rugby and their bias against South Africa – a fact borne out by too many examples to be simply dismissed as victimhood or sour grapes.

I’m not going to get into all of that now, but Gatland’s theories, and the widespread acceptance that they seem to have gained, brings me back to the view that there is a narrative - supported by World Rugby - that the wheel has turned and that the power now lies in the Northern Hemisphere, that the best players are there, that Ireland and France are the best teams and that one of them was a shoo-in to win the 2023 World Cup.

It was already apparent three years earlier, with the 2021 British and Irish Lions tour. World Rugby has stated that they regard the Lions Tour as second only to the World Cup when it comes to promoting the game world-wide. There’s nothing wrong with that, and the audience numbers bear it out. The problem though, is that in hyping it, a narrative was created. The Lions are an almost mystical amalgamation of four nations, four national teams who rise every four years to take on the best of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. and part of the plan is that they should beat them, of course

Any sporting contest, however, belongs to both teams on the field. The circumstances must be such that they have an equal chance of success. Sure, the home team will have the advantage of a noisy crowd on their side, but that apart, everyone involved in the staging of the game has a duty to ensure its fairness.

The hype around the Lions wasn’t really in line with that – the home nation hardly featured in it. You got the impression that they were only there to be the losing team. There was no home advantage for South Africa in 2021 because of Covid, of course, although you could argue it was already gone in 2009 when the spending power of the British pound meant that there were more Lions fans at the games than local ones.

By 2021 the story had developed into a Northern vs Southern Hemisphere confrontation, with little doubt about which side the international body was on.

The 2021 Springboks were fresh from the World Cup triumph and the accusations and criticisms alleging that they had somehow cheated and didn’t deserve to win it were flying around. The same ones that were to return even more hysterically in 2023.

So, the 2021 narrative went, the fabulous B&I Lions were going to put the record straight against a Springbok side that might have won the cup, but certainly didn’t play good rugby. They were brutes, who dominated physically and bent the substitution laws to suit their style.

Rassie Erasmus alluded to these things in the video he produced after the 1^st Test in 2021. He mentioned that the narrative went that the Springboks were thugs, playing negative rugby and he had asked for them to be judged on what they did on the field, not on those perceptions. He also asked for equal respect, for the players and, especially, the captain to be treated in the same way as their opponents.

That he felt they didn’t get that is history now and his infamous video critique went public thanks, apparently, to the referee himself. It led to Erasmus’ ban from the game, of course. I will never know or understand what he was trying to achieve, but I’m pretty sure Erasmus’ actions were brave acts of sacrifice, aimed at derailing the prevailing narrative.

Had he followed the process and waited for a reply via official referee review channels things would have turned out very differently. Nick Berry wasn’t a cheat, but his refereeing certainly confirmed what was being said – that Springbok side could never beat the Lions legally by playing their kind of rugby. The second Test would most likely have gone the same way and the Northern Hemisphere will have taken its rightful place on the world rugby throne.

That didn’t happen of course, but the story didn’t end there. There was again a sense that South Africa’s victory wasn’t real because it wasn’t fair.

With that in mind, we set out on the road to the 2023 World Cup. Ireland and France were dominating their opponents. Ireland beat the All Backs on tour and France scraped home against the Boks in Paris after Du Toit was red-carded for being pushed into contact and the communication between the referee and the TMO mysteriously failed before he could review the winning try, which came after a clear double movement.

No matter – we aren’t whining about referees here – the upshot was that Ireland and France were designated the “best teams on Earth” by the Six Nations media and SA and NZ were declared no-hopers for the World Cup. Everyone up north, World Rugby included, agreed with that and the narrative was taken up again – the Northern Hemisphere’s time has come and everyone else might as well not turn up.

The 2023 Six Nations tournament was widely touted by the commentators as the “best rugby tournament on the planet” and some of French and Irish players were being called the best rugby players in the world. Super Rugby, the Rugby Championship and the World Cup-winning players that were coming to France from New Zealand and South Africa later in the year were discounted. And the fact that the All Blacks and Springboks had shown that they know how to win the World Cup, three times each, didn’t count for much either.

I wrote this, back in May 2023: “The team that wins the World Cup will win seven games in a row in September and October. What happened in February and March counts for nothing at all.” OK, so the Boks did lose to Ireland in the pool games, as they did against New Zealand in 2019, but you get my point. It’s not an original story, it’s what Naas meant when he said the Currie Cup isn’t won in May. What surprises me is that there are rugby experts who don’t seem to know that.

So, having three Southern Hemisphere sides in the semifinals in 2023, with Ireland not getting past the quarters again and the hosts getting dumped out on their home field, wasn’t part of the plan. Neither was the way the final panned out.

Once again, the response was to declare the Springbok win illegitimate. The behaviour of the crowds, and the abuse of referees was taken to a new level. Yes, we also complain when we lose, but after that, no-one can ever point it out to us again.

World Rugby’s response, at their awards evening, was to pretend that none of it had happened and to reward the Northern teams as if they had taken the story to its desired conclusion and come up trumps anyway. 

The ungracious behaviour goes on and on. Warren Gatland’s plan is just a continuation of that.

The Makhanda Khaya Majola Week was as good as it gets

 

The first Khaya Majola Week I went to was in 1989. It was still the Nuffield Week back then and it was in Johannesburg. That was the first year that I was engaged as a freelance journalist – I was still a teacher then – and I was to cover every week, bar one or two, as a journalist until 2018 when the Saturday Star School Sport supplement was canned by the new owners of Independent Media.

By then, I’d become so much a part of proceedings that the organisers – more about them later – found a way to keep me coming.

I have to admit to an increasing level of grumpiness as I’ve grown older and I’ve, unkindly, been accused be of being cynical and complaining. I suppose I’d have to agree, to an extent, with that and that I went to Makhanda for the 2023 Khaya Majola Week with a less than fully positive attitude.

I got back home on Thursday cured, for now at least. I guess what I needed was to meet up with and mingle with people who make big sacrifices to provide opportunities for schoolboy cricketers to play the game, and to be engulfed in the spirit of generosity and the attention to detail that characterises the hospitality you get when these events are held in a small town.

And so it was in Makhanda. The tournament began with an official opening at which a guest speaker was to address the boys. A mistake, I thought. The players don’t want to hear what some self-important has-been has to say, they just want to play. But I was wrong, the speaker was Adi Birrell who has a coaching CV as long as your arm. He imparted some homespun Eastern Cape wisdom and his message was aimed straight at the players. It was spellbinding, and it set the tone for what was to come.

Graeme College – the Grahamstown school that isn’t St Andrew’s or Kingswood – was the venue and at that opening function I met Kevin Watson, the headmaster of Graeme, and Gregg van Molendorff, his deputy and the man in charge of the local organising committee. They were in our faces, in the nicest possible way, for the rest of the week.

Mr Watson is just remarkable. I’ve been to many of these sorts of things. But I’ve never seen the headmaster of the host school take ownership of the event the way he did. He was out there supervising the rolling of the wicket, painting the lines himself, and pulling the covers off – you don’t see that every day, but it went further. His mission seemed to be to make everyone feel at home and enjoying themselves. And at the closing dinner at the end of it, I watched him go around the room thanking everyone for their contribution. Even me, who really didn’t do that much.

He had a willing and able accomplice in Gregg van Molendorff. I’ve come across organisers of big events who pay attention to the details and make sure the proceedings run like clockwork. And I’ve seen others who are more people orientated and concentrate on relationships with the visitors. He was both, and then some. Indefatigable, always smiling and completely incapable of saying no to any request.

They were the locals. The CSA people were also there. Morgan Pillay, the tournament director for 28 years now, is simply the best sports administrator I’ve ever come across. Niels Momberg, for many years CSA’s manager of Youth and Tertiary Cricket, has been promoted to another role and in that one he is in charge of umpires and scorers, among other things. So, guess what? He used that as an excuse to spend the week in Makhanda anyway, and miss yet another birthday with his family.

Morgan’s birthday is the day before Neils’s, by the way, so he has also been away for it for close to 30 years now.

The men in charge set the tone and everyone else involved with running the event followed suit. At some tournaments and festivals it’s all about exclusion. Not everyone’s invited to the functions, you have to have the right accreditation to get into certain areas and they kick you out at closing time.

Not at this one. You got the idea that, of course you’re welcome – they made sure of that.

And then there was the setting. The schools of Grahamstown are pristine exceptions to the rule in a town that’s crumbling. The potholed roads have become famous, as have the wild donkeys roaming the streets.

There were matches at the clubs of the Farmers League in the surrounding areas. We took a drive to Salem, reportedly the oldest cricket field in the country. It was magical.

My colleague Hannes Nienaber and I had a beer in the pub there – he has a strong regard for the history and traditions of the game, and in that spirit, we also had to have a beer at the Rat and Parrot, the heart of university life in the town – although it was eerily quiet with the students not there.

It’s all about cricket and the players, of course, and I got the feeling that they were having a great time too. It showed in their play. There were some great performances and they can only have benefitted from playing on those fields, in those historic settings.

I wrote once before that if I was in charge the Khaya Majola Week will always be held in Potchefstroom. The fields are great and they are all close to each other, and the people there are just so nice. After the week gone by, I think we can alternate between Potch and Makhanda – it’s even better down there.

My top 10 school sports moments in 2023

 

I’ve been compiling these little end-of-the-year top 10 highlights lists since about 2009 when the Saturday Star began running a school sport supplement. At first it was a way to fill a page during the “silly season” in December – when there had to be a newspaper, but there was no real news to fill it.

I got to enjoy doing it and there were those who enjoyed reading it, it seems, so I kept it going on this platform after School Sport was closed down. From the beginning I made it a rule that I would only include games and events that I had actually attended, or watched on TV, at the least. That became more challenging when I stopped working and there were no longer sponsored trips to weeks and tournaments and I began to rely on the rare televised schools games and the bigger interprovincial competitions that did get aired.

And then, along came SuperSport Schools. It’s been a game-changer for me and my trivial list year can include, as you’ll see, references to the School Boat Race, and the SA Schools Water Polo Champs, and I can say I was there – via my laptop and an HDMI cable.

1 So, highlight number one in 2023 was the growth in depth and quality of the SuperSport Schools coverage. I was able to watch the biggest rugby derbies, the interprovincial hockey and rugby weeks, the Boat Race and the SA Schools Water Polo tournament, while never leaving my couch. Who could have imagined?

2 The St Benedict’s rowing and Northcliff athletics records are still stuck, although there may have been a slight shift this year. Northcliff duly won the Joburg co-ed schools athletics interhigh for the 25^th year in a row, but they squeaked home by just 4 points over Rand Park. A disqualification here, or a dropped relay baton there, and the unbeaten run would have been history! Bennies were comfortable winners of the SA Schools Rowing Championships for the 29th consecutive year and they aren’t going anywhere. They also won the schools boat race for the sixth year in a row.

3 The St Stithians Girls water polo team were unbeaten in 60 games during the 2022/2023 season, That includes winning six national tournaments, including the big ones – the St Peter’s, Reef Cup and their own Saints Invitational.

4 It was quite a sporting year for the St Stithians family of schools. Their boys 1^st hockey team won the Aitken Cup – ending Jeppe’s streak – and their girls won the Pullen Trophy. That’s the first time that’s happened, and then they had four players selected for the SA U19 cricket team: Esosa Aihevba, Lhuan-Dre Pretorius, Richard Seletswane and Kwena Maphaka.

5 Speaking of dominant schools, there’s SACS hockey. Their 1^st team was unbeaten and ended the year as the number one ranked team. There were 11 SACS players in the WP team that won the U18 Interprovinicial Tournament. Six of them made the SA Schools team and a further four were in the SA U16 side.

6 The big schools rugby derby clashes are another perennial highlight for me. Thanks to SuperSport Schools I was able to see the Midlands derby between Michaelhouse and Hilton, K Day in Grahamstown, and the Paarl Interschools extravaganza. But the one I attended was the KES vs Jeppe double header – possibly the second biggest of them all. They were thrillers, played in front of capacity crowds and the honours were split, one win each.

7 A few weeks later we had the Rugby Youth Weeks, The U19 Academy Week was in Joburg and The Golden Lions beat Western Province in the “main game”, which wasn’t that surprising seeing that there were four or five players in the Lions side who certainly should have been at the Craven Week instead. The Jeppe/KES midfield combination was great to watch and how those players were not considered good enough for the A team can only be attributed to one-eyed selections. Instead, the selectors opted for a two-school strategy – Monument and Helpmekaar – which didn’t work: the Craven side lost two out of their three matches.  

8 and 9 – a couple of outstanding individuals, Jeppe’s Jaydon Brooker and David Teeger of King Edward. Brooker achieved a rare double, selection for both the Southern Gauteng U18 hockey team, and the Central Gauteng Lions cricket team. He was player of the tournament at the hockey interprovincial and made the SA Schools and U19 teams, Unfortunately, he has had to miss the Khaya Majola Week because he is away with the National U21 hockey team at the Junior World Cup in Kuala Lampur.

The David Teeger story is a remarkable one. He is the captain of the Central Gauteng Lions, and the SA U19 teams, although the latter almost got derailed after Cricket South Africa launched an inquiry into a pro-Israel comment he made when accepting an award. Luckily, sanity prevailed in that and he will lead the SA team at the U19 World Cup in January. The big Teeger story of the year, however, was when his KES teammates turned up at his house early one Saturday morning to walk to school with him. He comes from an Orthodox Jewish family and he chooses not to ride in a car on the Sabbath. So, he walks to school for home games and stays in a B&B on Friday night for away ones. That kind of commitment has to be admired – and it shows in his cricket.

10 The year ended with the SA Schools Water Polo tournament in Gqberha. It’s a massive event, played from U12 to U19, boys and girls. I don’t really approve of the scale of it, I don’t think provincial colours should be handed out so liberally. For me the two U19 finals are what it’s really all about, and they were thrillers. Central Gauteng won the girls game by two goals over Western Province  and WP won the boys – in a penalty shootout after they equalised with five second to go against Gauteng. It was edge-of-the-seat stuff.

11 Here’s an 11^th, just because I can. Back in May when Jeppe hosted Affies, they couldn’t field as many sides as the Pretoria powerhouse, so they asked Springs Boys’ High to fill in the gaps. The Springs 1^st team played Affies 3rds. Affies won, although I can’t remember the score, and afterwards the two teams posed, arm in arm, for a photo. An unlikely meeting between schools who exists in different dimensions, and a moving occasion.

Gauteng schools water polo - massive.

 

I was at the Gauteng Schools Water Polo capping ceremony at St Peter’s on Tuesday night, and it was quite amazing. The province is sending 22 teams to the Interprovincial tournament in Gqeberha this weekend. That’s 304 players, 40 coaches, 12 managers and seven referees.

I can’t think of many touring contingents that big, and they were all presented with certificates and scrolls on Tuesday. The ceremony was held in the air-conditioned indoor basketball facility at St Peter’s  – which made the two and a half hours it took bearable, given the heat we’ve been having in Joburg this past week. They’ve done it before, obviously, it ran like clockwork, every player got his or her moment in the spotlight and tribute was paid to some special individuals, in an appropriate manner.

All very impressive and very different to the days when I used organise these evenings. We only had two, later three, teams back then and we’d have a braai for the boys and their parents (no girls polo back then) and get someone like Hennie van Niekerk or Billy Otto to do the hand-shaking. It’s come a long way.

I’ve been critical about them letting it get so big. I’ve always felt provincial competition is an elite, not a mass participation event, and handing certificates to over 300 players is not elite. On the other hand, though, I agree that its wonderful to have that many teenagers actively engaged in healthy sport, among their friends at this time of the year – they could be doing far less positive things with their time. Water polo is a better game than most when it comes to a vehicle for teaching values and life skills. And I applaud the sacrifices made by so many teachers, coaches and administrators to make it possible.

Pros and cons to both arguments, I guess.

Where I do have some strong views is when it comes to the age at which children should be introduced to serious competitive sport. There are under-12 and under-13 categories at SA Schools polo these days, That’s 11 and 12 year-olds! Should they be introduced to the joys and heartaches of team selection, the arduous training that is part of the game, and the seriousness of a professional tournament at that age? Shouldn’t they rather be learning the basics through game situations that focus on the fun of it, with no scores being kept?

Still, seeing all those shiny smiling faces, and that array of school uniforms, on Tuesday night warmed my heart. The organisers pledged, at the ceremony, to make every step they take educationally accountable and that player safety is their priority. You can only applaud that.