40 years later, and the Easter festivals are as good as they have ever been

 

The schools rugby festivals have been part of Easter in this town since 1984. The Saints Festival would have been celebrating its 40th anniversary this year if it weren’t for Covid, St John’s have had their 25^th  birthday and this year is the 20^th KES festival.

Those who came up with the idea in the beginning could never have imagined they would have the longevity they have had and that, all these years later, when the world would be such a different place, we could have a day like Saturday.

I was at King Edwards in the afternoon, and at St John’s earlier and I don’t recall seeing crowds bigger than those. I meant to go to Saints too, but I was worried that I’d never find parking back at KES for the Jeppe game, which I (and half of Joburg, it turned out) wanted to see. I’m told there was a massive crowd there too.

The founders of that original Saints Festival who first had the vison have, sadly, all passed on now. Colin Hall, who was later to become a giant in the South African business world, was the head of the parents association back then, he died earlier this year; Mark Henning the headmaster in 1984, died in 2021; and Tim Clifford, the rugby coach who came up with the concept, passed on a year later.

I’ve been around these festivals for most of the 40 years and seen something of their inner workings. They have become big commercial undertakings, and fund-raising enterprises for the schools that run them. But the educational principles articulated in the beginning are strictly adhered to.

I’ve spent the last few festivals at KES, where they give me a place to sit in the tournament office and I leave at the end of each one newly amazed at the level of commitment and the sheer hard work put in by so many, mainly volunteers to make it all work. I’ve been a spectator to the same activities at the other two festivals, so I know the same things are going on there too – they could never run the way they do if they weren’t.

And on Saturday those dedicated workers were rewarded with the smooth running of big, big days in three different places. 40 years later the Easter festivals, amazingly are bigger than ever, and as good as they have ever been.

 

It's Easter rugby festival time, and I'm looking forward to things staying the same again

 

Sport, these days, is entertainment and the laws of rugby, in particular, are continuously being tweaked to make the game more appealing to spectators, and to TV audiences.

And schoolboy rugby, I’d argue, is the most entertaining form of the game – the numbers that turn up at school fields around the country every Saturday bear that out. And now you can see most school games on TV too, thanks to SupersportSchools.

There’s usually no room to spare at the big interschool derby games, and there won’t be again this weekend at the Easter Rugby Festivals. There are three in Joburg – at St Stithians, St John’s and King Eward VII School – at a couple of others in other places.

The Standard Bank KES Festival is the youngest of the three Highveld events, and it’s the 20^th staging of it this year (it would have been the 22nd is it were not for Covid). The first Saints Festival was in 1984, and St John’s started theirs in 1996.

They are a long-term success story and while there have been some changes to them down the years, they have remained the same in principle, based in their hearts on educational values.

I dug out one of the earliest programmes from the St Stithians Festival and those values were articulated in it:

“The idea is to invite like-minded schools that share a values-driven ethos and have a healthy attitude to sport. It is a festival of rugby with no overall winner, no tournament team and no man of the match awards. The idea was to match schools who don’t normally meet during the season, and as far as possible, there will be no derby games and no repeat fixtures from year to year.”

That’s still how it is. I’ve been fortunate to spend the weekend at the KES Festival for the last few years, and I’ll be there again this year. I was in the office there this week to pick up accreditation tags and I heard those sorts of things spoken out aloud by the organisers. The values are never deeply buried, despite the intense busyness that’s there in the leadup to the event. It’s exactly the same at St John’s and St Stithians, I’d wager.

What goes on between the lines on the field, Adi Norris, the director of the St John’s Festival once told me, has to remain exactly the same for the players, year after year, and the hype and commerciality that surrounds the event must never be allowed to interfere with that.

That’s exactly right. I know that’s what’s going to happen at KES this year – for the 20^th time – and I’m looking forward to it.

KES have assembled an impressive lineup of schools to mark their anniversary. They will only play two games each this year. That’s a change, but a necessary one in the interests of the safety of the players, given the incredible concentration of fixtures at this time of the year and the number of games they are expected to play in a short period.

The 12 schools that played in the first KES festival in 2002 were: King Edward VII, Jeppe High School for Boys, Parktown Boys’ High School, Queens College, Paarl Gimnasium, Durban High School, Affies, Pretoria Boys High, Rondebosch Boys’ High, SACS, Selborne College, Wynberg Boys’ High.

Of those, KES, Jeppe, Parktown, Queens and Pretoria Boys High are back.

Fixtures

Saturday

8am Hudson Park vs Queens
9.15am Northwood vs Brandwag
10.30am Bishops vs Dale
11.45am Ben Vorster vs Eldoraigne
1pm Pretoria Boys High vs Selborne
2.15pm Queens vs Jeppe
3.30pm KES vs Paarl Boys’ High

 

Monday
8am Ben Vorster vs Queens
9.15am Paarl Boys’ High vs Pretoria Boys High
10.30am Northwood vs Hudson Park
11.45am Eldoraigne vs Selborne
1pm Dale vs Parktown
2.15pm Jeppe vs Brandwag
3.3pm KES vs Bishops

I'm not a fan of the language-use in Chasing the Sun

 

I took some flak in the comments section when I said, last time, that the use of the F-word in the Chasing the Sun documentary was way over the top.

I watched the first episode of the second series last night and if anything, the language is even worse.

I’m an educator at heart, one who believes rugby can play an important role in the school curriculum because of the lessons that can be taught through it.

There are skills and techniques that can be learnt and the players become fit, strong young men, but the lessons learnt are really about values. Just like young people acquire facts and figures, and techniques in their years at school, but what we really want them to learn is to become good people. “Good sons, good fathers, good husbands” is a refrain that comes up at boys-only schools quite often.

And I’ve always thought the right kind values can be taught through rugby. People have different ideas about what those are, but courage, commitment, discipline and reliability are certainly some of them. So are some “softer” issues, the ones that define decent behaviour – sportsmanship, honesty, teamwork, courtesy, gratitude etc. Rugby is a game that develops character, good people get the success they deserve. Terms that have become cliched, perhaps, but those are things we tell ourselves, and the players.

The story of the Springboks and their successive World Cup victories is a fantastic one, and the way Chasing the Sun celebrates how certain players have overcome their dire circumstances is deeply moving. The team has mastered what it takes to be winners at that level.

They are the embodiment of many of the values the game teaches, and Rassie Erasmus is an expert at harnessing all of that in the cause of victory. It’s inspirational and if I were a coach I’d want my players to watch the series, and I’d be looking for quotes and anecdotes to use in my coaching, and teaching.

Excessive repetition of the same profanities is, however in my view, a sign of lazy language use. That’s a lesson that teachers who want to produce good people should be teaching, and using the most foul expressions imaginable, all the time, is surely not helping in instilling the values of decency that we claim the game teaches.

Swear on Rassie and the boys – I’m told it happens in every team and dressing room at that level – I’m close to my dotage now, I know, but I find it offensive and, worse, not the example I’d want school players to follow.

Here comes the flak …..

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.