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.

Why run an under-18 elite rugby camp now?

The announcement of an under-18 Elite Player Development squad of 53 by SA Rugby this week raises a quite a few red flags.

They will be at the Stellenbosch Academy of Sport from Thursday 27 February to Sunday March 1^st and an SA Rugby statement says, “The main objectives of the camps are to assess the players’ physical and technical abilities and to guide them with the goal of preparing them to advance through the structures in future. The players will participate in a series of training sessions over the four days, where they will have the opportunity to work with a handful of coaches within the SA Rugby structures.”

There will be, we are told, similar under-16 and under-17 camps later in the season.

The ruggas.co.za website, in its compelling weekly Ruggas TV vlog, makes a number of telling observations on the issue. Take a look at it, it’s in Afrikaans and if you understand it, you don’t really need read this piece any further. I fully concur with what they have to say. The link is:

http://ruggas.co.za/ruggas-tv-episode-3-year-2/

For those who don’t speak Afrikaans, here’s a synopsis, with a few of my own observations added in.

The first and obvious question is why? Seeing that the main objective is to assess the players and guide their preparation for the year ahead and seeing the majority of those named come from the usual places: the professionally-run elite rugby schools (more on that later) why not leave those functions to the schools themselves. They know the boys, have been doing those measurements anyway and have shown themselves to be more than capable of putting young players on skills and physical conditioning programmes.

Why take them to Stellenbosch (at great cost) on the weekend before their season begins – it will already have started for some – when they can learn the same things at home?

The matter of costs, the Ruggas crew suggests, could explain the lopsided composition of the group. You can see their names here:

http://ruggas.co.za/sa-rugby-outline-objectives-for-u-18-high-performance-camp/

Twenty of the 53 players named are from Western Province, which will cut the travel bill; the Blue Bulls and Sharks supply six each; nine are from Grey College, which is about right; while the Golden Lions, despite being highly competitive at the Craven Week in most years and a rich source of players of colour, only have three representatives.

I rather believe it’s further proof of the favourable treatment that WP gets at this level. The same treatment that allows them two sides at the Craven Week when all the other provinces have been cut to only one. Three or four of the top 10 schools in the land are in the Western Cape, sure, but that really doesn’t mean that there aren’t good players in other schools around the country.

Then there’s the question of establishing an elite group before the season has kicked off. I presume it is made up of players who were at the under-18 and under-16 Youth Weeks in 2019. What guarantee is there that they will be the best around in 2020? Will they all even make the 1^st teams at their schools this year?

And what about the players who have been left out? Aren’t they being told they are not good enough, before a ball has even been kicked in anger? Are we being told that the Craven Week has become irrelevant (I think it is going that way), if not, why not choose this squad in July?

It’s one of those exercises that sounds quite clever, but really isn’t. It’s closing the net when they should be trying to spread it wider. What about the late developers, what about the isolated nuggets at the weaker rugby schools that we all know are there?

And most importantly, what about the potential stars who see their exclusion as rejection and either lose their motivation, or start looking for overseas options?

Give for the right reasons

The English idiomatic expression about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing has its origin in the Christian bible and it refers to charitable deeds. Matthew 6:3 reads: "but when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

It’s an instruction that you should give in secret, and without an expectation of praise or reward for doing so, and it’s relevant in the current ongoing debate about the recruitment of star rugby players by schools.

You’d have to be a miserable grouch to deny those young individuals the chance to live a better life, and for some of them to develop into players who will one day represent their provinces and even the country. But then please call what you are doing an elite rugby recruitment programme, or something like that, and confess that you are conducting your search in the poorest areas because that’s where the needs are greatest and the chances of a good return on your investment are best.

I saw a statement from a school involved in a player poaching controversy this week in which they claim to be funding boys who are in desperate need of help and, in the same paragraph, admit that contracts were signed to the effect that the boys would come to them when they progressed to high school.

That’s not charity, that’s giving with strings attached. It might work from a rugby point of view, but it’s the left and right hand working very closely together. It not philanthropy it’s patronage. The boys in question didn’t stick to the deal and have gone to a rival school. Blue murder was screamed as a result!

I’m the last person who is allowed to preach, but seeing I started off with a biblical verse, let me end with a short sermon.

We should all be doing good wherever we can. And because inequality is so great and schooling is so poor everywhere in our country, and because we are doomed if our children don’t receive a decent education, education is a good place to start.

Massive sums of money are being spent on attracting talented players to schools so that their rugby teams can be better. Fine, if that’s what you want to do, but you don’t get credit for addressing poverty and the inequality in educational standards by doing that. There are better, more sustainable, ways to spend your money

Give because it’s the right thing to do, and don’t let your right hand know what the left one is doing.

It's starting at primary school level now

Here we go again. The start of the rugby season is still a month away and already we have one school refusing to play another. It’s about player poaching, again, and while it’s disappointing, no-one should really be surprised.

The schools involved, DHS and Glenwood, have been grouchy neighbours up on the Berea for a long time and Glenwood can’t seem to keep away from this kind of controversy. There’s been a perception for a while now that the school looks for talented players in other places and tries to lure them to their ranks. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but certainly none of the top schools in Joburg will play any kind of sport against them. It’s not the first time DHS has called off relations, for the same reason.

So, not an original story. What’s different this time is the age group level at which this one is playing out. The boys involved are in grade 8 – 13 year-olds - and, it seems, deals were done and money was paid during their primary school years already.

There’s a memorandum of understanding that was signed by the heads of the boys-only schools to the effect that they will not approach players who are at other schools. It’s well-intentioned, although it’s significant that most of the recent well-publicised controversies, including this one, involve schools that are signatories to the agreement.

That said, there seems to be an acceptance that when it comes to grade 7s deciding on which high school they will be going to, the gloves are off and it’s an open market that everyone can participate in. OK, but I have expressed the (very much minority) opinion that at such a young age in particular, educational and ethical values should still apply. I have been to the under-13 Craven Week and seen the talent scouts from the top (and wannabee top) schools standing on the touchlines, clipboards in hand and cheque books in the back pocket, running their eyes over the young flesh on display like trainers and breeders at the thoroughbred yearling sales.

It was only a matter of time before things went awry and these practices hit the headlines.

What happened In Durban is happening in other places too. Briefly, DHS paid for the schooling at Glenwood Prep (unfortunately named, it turned out), of two KZN Primary Schools rugby players on the understanding that they will go to DHS in grade 8. They reneged and are at Glenwood Boys’ High now, hence the outrage.

In the face of the fierce competition for the top primary school players, the recruitment people at the high schools have to act quickly to sign the right 13-year olds up, and they need to have the right deals to offer. A way of getting around that is to get in 1^st and seal a commitment while the child is in grade 7, or even in grade 6. Pay for his primary schooling and contract him to come to your high school eventually.

Now, I’m totally in agreement with the principle of offering financial assistance to needy parents who cannot afford to send their talented offspring to a good school. I’ll even go along with the idea of funding primary school education with the aim of giving a bright young child a solid grounding so that he or she has a better chance of success in secondary school.

That’s not what’s happening with these rugby players. This is the win-at-all-costs attitude sinking to new moral depths. The practice should be outlawed and no-one should play against schools who subscribe to it, whether they are enrolling the children they have groomed themselves, or stolen them from someone else.  

Are the rugby youth weeks necessary?

Changes to the arrangements for this year’s youth rugby interprovincial weeks were announced this week and, it seems, there are issues at SA Rugby and its affiliate the SA Schools Rugby Association, that are deeper than just the financial woes associated with the loss of Coca-Cola as the sponsor of their annual winter Youth Week programme.

A few years ago they grouped together the under-13 Craven Week and the under-16 Grant Khomo Week; and the under-18 Academy and Craven Weeks - each pair to be played at the same venue – because it was more economical that way. A unified organising committee and reduced travel arrangements, along with the economies of scale would make for cheaper tournaments.

That was true. They are sticking to that, but the groupings have changed. The u-13 Craven and u-18 Academy Weeks will run together in Johannesburg this year, and the u-18 Craven and under-16 Grant Khomo Weeks will be on at the same time in Port Elizabeth.

No reasons have been officially given for the re-arrangement. The unofficial word going around seems to indicate that have it all wrong. They need the two elite high school weeks to be together, apparently, because of the people who have to attend them. That translates into the SA Rugby big-wigs who want to watch them. Sure, there are talent identification people who need to be there, but my experience is that there are many VIP hangers-on at these occasions who don’t. Their travel and accommodation costs are what are gobbling up the available funding.

And, you have to ask, why relegate the under-18 “B” Academy Week to a minor event (it isn’t budgeted for by SA Rugby this year, I read somewhere). Selection margins are small, and factors other than only merit go into the choosing of teams – more of that later – so saying that the important people don’t need to watch those teams play seems to be a crazy narrowing down of the talent identification process.

As for the under-13 Craven Week, why not just tank it, or turn it into two regional festivals, North and South? The relevance of a week at this level has often been questioned on rugby and physiological grounds, with research pointing out how few under-13 provincial players go on to perform at the same level in high school.

Then you have to wonder what the ongoing value of the under-18 Craven Week is. The announcement of the new arrangements includes a commitment to SA Rugby's Strategic Transformation Plan 2030. This means that each squad of 23 players has to field a minimum of 12 players of colour. It is also stated that foreign players at SA Schools cannot be included in those numbers any more.

I have often stressed that transformation of the game is non-negotiable. How it’s done is the issue, however, and forcing quotas onto elite teams without having done the developmental hard work at the levels below is just daft. Increasing the size of the quotas doesn’t mean there will be more developing of players of colour who can perform at those levels.

If the Craven Week is to be regarded as one of the places at which that development is done, or as an opportunity to identify players with the potential to be further developed, that’s fine. It just won’t be the elite under-18 rugby tournament anymore.

Some argue that it hasn’t been that for a while now. The big inter-school festivals –the Noord-Suid weekend in Pretoria and the Wildeklawer gathering in Kimberley – have taken on that role.

The 1^st teams of all the top schools in the country are at those, and while there is no 12:23 quota in place there are players of colour in action there, chosen entirely on merit. Most of those will also be at the Craven Week later on in the year.

The talent scouts are at those events now as are, worryingly, the recruitment people of many overseas rugby clubs.

Let’s face it, the Youth Weeks aren’t that much of a big deal anymore and shuffling the deck chairs around isn’t really going to stop the ship from sinking.

Looking back at 10 school sport years

In 2009, when I was still at The Star, I was asked to compile a list of my 10 school sporting highlights of the decade that was just ending to go along with similar lists drawn up by the reporters on the various sporting beats the paper covered.

I don’t remember much of it, but I think the exercise must have been quite easy because I had the archives to dig into to look for the standout teams and players over the previous 10 years.

I thought it might be fun to repeat the exercise for the 20-teens, although it’s not so simple without an article library to go to, and with my fading memory.

Here goes anyway – and I’m using the dodgy memory excuse to explain anyone I’ve left out. And yes, it’s biased towards Joburg where I live. I have only included events that I was personally at.

In roughly chronological order:

1 St Benedict’s rowing. They would have been on my 2009 list. In that year they won the boys trophy at the SA Schools Rowing Championships for the 16th time in a row, which was pretty remarkable. Well, they haven’t lost since and were crowned for the 26th consecutive time at Roodeplaat this year.

2 In 2010 Bree Primary School took the under-13 title at the Danone Nations Cup international football tournament at the Orlando Stadium. The Joburg school should have competed in 2009 in Brazil, but the event was cancelled because of the swine flu epidemic that year. So, they ran it together with the 2010 event in South Africa, and Bree won at home – the third South African team to take the title at the 52-nation event.

3 In 2011 King Edward VII School became the first school to win all three sections in Joburg’s T20 Johnny Waite cricket knockout competition. Their 1st, 2nd and 3rd teams beat St Stithians in all three finals.

4 At a triangular athletics meeting at Jeppe in 2015 I watched two world top 10 athletes in action. Patrick Duvenhage of KES was ranked in the top 10 on the planet in his age group in both discus and shotput at the time while Jeppe’s Mpho Tladi ran the world’s quickest time in the under-16 100m hurdles earlier in the year.

5 Ruan de Swardt of Affies became just the 13th sportsman to make the South African Schools cricket and rugby teams. He was selected for the rugby side at the Craven Week in  July 2016 and made the cricket side at the end of the year. The previous player to do the "double" had been Martizburg College’s Adrian Penzhorn in 2002.

6 Remarkably, the next player to achieve that feat was Grey College’s Christopher Schreuder, the very next year.

7 At the 2017 boys schools interhigh meeting at St David’s, Lythe Pillay of King Edward VII school won the 100m, 200m and 400, races in time of 10.8; 21.6 and 48.6, respectively. He has gone on to do even better since, but that was the day he announced himself as a future superstar.

8 Travis Gordon of King Edward VII School captained the South African Schools rugby team in 2017. He was the first player from that school to do so and it came at the end of one of the best seasons in memory by a KES 1st team.

9 In 2018 Jeppe High School for Boys won all three of Joburg’s hockey trophies - the under-19 Aitken Cup, the under-15 Boden Trophy, and the under-16 Top 8 tournament. Their 1st team won the Aitken again in 2019 – for the 5th year in a row.

10 Max Chaumeton of Parktown Boys’ High came 28th at World Cross Country Championships in 2019. He went on the make the final of the mens 1500m race at the SA Athletics Championships. He ended his school athletics career without ever losing a 1500m race.

11 One more, lasting the whole decade really: the rise of girls water polo as a school sport. 10 years ago it hardly featured, now it’s the fastest growing sport at schools. There are big tournaments all over the country including two in Joburg, the St Peter’s Old Petrians and the Saints Stayers at St Stithians. Both were won this year by St Stithians Girls College who have emerged as the top girls polo school in the land.