Theo Garrun Talking Schoolboy rugby

  Schools rugby got back on track over the long weekend, following a year-long break, and it was great to see. I was at the Monument Centenary Festival where, the absence of spectators apart, there was a welcome familiarity about the action on the field. There was some early season rustiness in the handling, some suicidal attacking play and a few helter-skelter offloads in keeping with attempts to enter the festival spirit.   It was clear that the boys have been training hard for a long, long time. There was superb physical conditioning on display and, even at an event featuring many of our top schools, the size and definition of some of the boys was quite incredible. And the gap between the top sides and the rest hasn’t gone away during the shutdown. The late games on Friday and Saturday, featuring the regularly top-ranked schools, were a clear step up. They were massively physical encounters, with professional level skills on display. It was day one of the season, bu...

After more that a year, school rugby is starting up again and, while it’s going to be strange having no spectators, and sending the boys home immediately after their games goes against many of the social and educational points the game is supposed to be making, I guess we should be thankful, though. And, on the Highveld it’s starting with quite a bang – Monument have resurrected their 100th Anniversary tournament after the original organisers pulled out at the 11th hour due, apparently, to sponsorship issues. What followed in the social media underscored a point I’ve been trying to make for a while now. The Krugersdorp community rallied, just as they did earlier in the year when Monument’s fields were washed away in a flash flood, and all sorts of offers in cash and kind were made to save the festival. I have no knowledge of what actually followed, but in a day or two it was announced that it was on again, with Blue Ribbon as a sponsor. Tjaart Van der Walt and Wynand Moolman, the rugby...