Is there really a big North-South gap?

 

The dominance of the Cape schools over those from up country at the Monument Centenary Festival and the Noord-Suid tournament at Affies over the last fortnight led to degrees of gloating and despair from supporters of the schools involved, and accusations – one publicly – that the schools from the South have broken the rules, and that they came into these 1^st matches far better prepared than their counterparts which indicated that they have been playing proper rugby matches on the sly for some time now.

The sports director of Garsfontein wrote a letter to the editor of News 24 making the allegations and the online response to that consisted, predictably, of flat out denials and accusations of sour grapes and bad losing.

I have no idea whether the allegations are true or not, and I guess we have to take educationalists at their word. I have, however, been watching these sorts of early season games – at the Joburg Easter festivals in particular – for 30-odd years now, and my observation has been that the teams that go into them without a few preparation games under their belts almost always come off second best.

Rugby, we all know, is a team game and coaches will tell you that individual stars don’t mean much if the team as a whole is disjointed and doesn’t perform the unit skills effectively. In short, you cannot play your first games of the season against some of the top schools in the land without a few warmups beforehand. That’s what it looked to me like they were doing last week, on the one side of the geographical divide, anyhow. I’ll leave it at that.

The disparities were stark. Some of the top Joburg and Pretoria schools were shipping 50-point defeats, and there a few unexpected results. Whether those shock victories indicate that the winning schools are going to be the undisputed top dogs at the end of the season, time will tell. I’m pretty sure the Northern schools will get better as the year progresses and that in the end, although the schools from down South will be superior as they usually are, the gap won’t be nearly as big as it seemed to be after those first rounds of games.

The biggest surprise result was Paarl Gimnasium’s 18-16 win over Grey College. It was Paarl’s first win over Grey since 2012 and it brought to an end a winning streak of 40 games for Grey that stretched back to 2017. Paarl Gim won all of their games at the two Highveld festivals and they looked very much like the side to watch this year. Grey, dare I say it, looked a bit underprepared in comparison. I know they are going to get much better.

The other unexpected losses included Monument going down 34-33 to Stellenberg and Affies losing 46-21 to Oakdale. In both cases the victors fully deserved to win. Let’s see how they go as the term goes on.

The strange timing of the season has thrown up some of the biggest traditional clashes of the year right up front. This Saturday will, for example. See Grey College travel to Paarl Boys’ High, while nearby, Paarl Gim host Paul Roos Gimnasium in one of the big W Cape derbies.

The unofficial Cape Town Southern Suburbs challenge kicks off with Bishops hosting SACS and Rondebosch facing Wynberg.

In the Eastern Cape, Queens host Selborne in one of the biggest Border schools clashes of the year, while Grey High take on St Andrew’s in the big Eastern Province decider.

Kearsney College take on Michaelhouse, DHS host Maritzburg College and Glenwood meet Westville Boys’ High in three of KZN’s biggest annual clashes.

Up in Gauteng, the Virseker Beker competition kicks off with Monument facing Waterkloof – the team that beat them in this competition last year.

There are two big trans-Jukskei clashes. King Edward travel to Pretoria Affies while across the railway track, Pretoria Boys High host Jeppe.

St John’s, fresh from their solid display at the Monument Festival, will also be in Pretoria on Saturday, they meet St Alban’s.