Theo Garrun Talking Schoolboy rugby

  Picture: Rondebosch Boys' High Facebook There were some unexpected, to say the least, results in Saturday’s 1 st team rugby matches across the country. Several teams have shown that there is perhaps no reason to believe that the pre-Covid pecking order in SA schools rugby will continue, as of right. Their performances at the weekend have added extra spice to next weekend’s Wildeklawer Festival at which just about all the top schools will be appearing. The consistent top four over the years, Grey College, Paarl Boys’ High, Paarl Gimnasium and Paul Roos Gimnasium were all shocked. Paarl Gim’s 2022 is supposed to be their “dream team” and they certainly started off the year that way. They beat Monument and Glenwood easily earlier on and looked to be on a roll. Affies, on the other hand had a few good wins, but then went down to Garsfontein for the 1 st time ever. They were not the favourites on Saturday, but won 29-26. Grey College don’t lose very often and they didn’t on Satu...

  The Easter festivals have come and gone and the consensus, it seems, is that all of them were successful, That’s despite a deluge of rain of Friday and Saturday that would, in a regular week, probably have seen the scheduled fixtures abandoned because of the injury risks associated with playing on waterlogged fields, and the potential long-term damage to the playing fields themselves. It wasn’t a regular week, though. After two years of no festivals – three, actually, because the 2019 Easter weekend was as rainy as this one, but with lightning too, so there was hardly any play then either, everyone was, therefore, so excited to be back that calling it off was never an option.  Neither was, for most, opting to play two games only, even though that idea was gaining traction back in 2019 when the sports scientists began questioning the wisdom of teenagers playing three hard games in just five days. The invitations to the 2022 festivals will have gone out last year some time. ...

  I’m wondering if the two-year gap in rugby festivals over Easter due to the shutdown of school sport due to Covid-19 didn’t have some positive spinoffs, one of which was the revitalisation of the concept. They were missed for the last few years, no question. The words “gee but it’s great to see the boys playing again” were pretty much part of every greeting I got from friends and acquaintances at KES, where I spent the weekend.  And the crowds, including the famous old boy contingents of the Eastern Cape schools, Queens and Dale, expressed their approval of the comeback, by turning up, despite Saturday’s non-stop rain and, consequently, Monday’s chilly viewing of teams that were indistinguishable from each other trying their best to play in mudholes – at all four venues. Five actually, if you include the under-16 festival that was held at Jeppe. Everyone at KES was appreciative, you felt, the organisation was superb and the hospitality hit a new level of warmth and generosit...

  There are those who will tell you that there’s really no room for a monastic, boarding school education in the 21 st Century. That schools like that are founded on an educational philosophy that is outdated and irrelevant, and morally dodgy. They’ll point out that there are many types of schools, and that our “old English” education-type institutions aren’t the only ones that produce good sports results, and send successful adults out into the world, and of course they are right. But there is something about those schools, and it goes beyond the boys buttoning up their blazers on a hot day, and greeting every adult they come across – and at at those sorts of schools they are somehow all taught to do that. There seems to be among their alumni a loyalty and attachment to the place they grew up in that goes beyond that of those who were schooled somewhere else. If you doubt that, go to one of the Easter rugby festivals that are on the go at the moment. I was at King Edwar...

   It’s been a while since I spent Easter rugby festival Thursday in the little corner of KES’s fabulously quaint cricket pavilion that they are always kind enough to let me set up my laptop and to leave my stuff in. The pavilion’s where the operation that runs the festival is based and I was back there yesterday. I went home last night newly awed by size of the team that it takes to run an event like this, and by how hard they have to work to make it happen. The Thursday of the Standard Bank KES Easter Festival is crazy. I’m sure it’s the same at all of them. There’s trouble at the gate because the security, rightly, won’t let cars in without the proper sticker, but the special guests who merit a sticker can’t get it unless they’re let inside. The teams have all suddenly got more officials than they originally said, and can they have kit for them, please? And nothing fits and can they swop? And someone is complaining that the distance between the stands and the field is too s...

  It’s getting close to kickoff time at the Easter rugby festivals and I get the feeling that many people here in Joburg, and in the Botha’s Hill vicinity are seriously considering going along to watch. If you are a lover of school rugby and have some doubts, think back to how the last two Easters have been and, if you’re still not convinced, switch on BBC World on the TV and look at the pictures from Shanghai where the entire city has been placed on lockdown, and remember April 2020 and 2021 – you’d have rushed to go to the rugby then, wouldn’t you? When I was a newspaper reporter covering the festivals, I’d pick the game of the day between the three in Joburg and make sure I got to each of those. Lately I pick one location and stick to it. It’s going to be KES this year – OK, maybe I’ll sneak across to St John’s on Thursday to watch the night games, because it’s possible and because, having watched them in action last weekend, I think this St John’s team are going to be worth...

  Hudson Park vs Eldoraigne at KES 2018 Next week is Easter rugby festival time, starting on Thursday, so some schools never played this Saturday, and the only action next Saturday will be at the Standard Bank festivals at Kearsney KES, St Stithians or St John’s. For the Joburg schools, and most of the others, I guess, Saturday saw the first proper full school fixtures for almost three years. And from the social media posts I’ve seen, the schools and their communities (pupils, parents, old boys) jumped right in and squeezed every bit of enjoyment out of them. I was at Jeppe vs St John’s and they tell me that’s the biggest crowd they’ve had outside of a Jeppe vs KES derby game. And that was on a chilly morning during which the weather forecasters were telling us to expect a Noah-style flood! And, remember, were are entering an era in which your chosen school game can probably be seen on the SuperSport Schools live stream (And, some technical glitches aside, hasn’t that experienc...

  If it’s Easter, it’s rugby festival time. That was something we used to say in the good old days, without realising that we were taking things for granted. Covid put paid to that for a while and we were forced to do something else over that long weekend for the last two years. Not this year, thankfully. The Joburg Easter rugby festivals are back and I’ll be spending all three days at King Edward VII School this year. I can’t wait. In 1984 St Stithians College turned 30 years old and, as is customary when it comes to school anniversaries, it was decided to mark the occasion with sporting events to which their long-term friends and rivals would be invited. Rugby is generally the cornerstone of anniversary celebrations programmes, so it was decided to hold a rugby festival over the Easter weekend that year. It was supposed to be a once-off occasion, but it grew into an annual event, morphing into what is now the Saints Easter Sports Festival. This year sees the 37 th editio...

  For two years, my weekly attempts to make sense of the school rugby games played around the country were cut short by the Covid-19 restrictions. This blog, I stress, is merely a personal reflection, of no real importance and with no authority. It’s actually just a pastime for me, but it is based on 40 odd years of watching schoolboys play rugby. Those last two years were awful. The disappointment of organised events being called off at the last moment, the uncertainty about whether arranged fixtures would go ahead, and then the surreal experience of those few games that were played going ahead without spectators. There were a few positives, though, the obvious one being a new joy and appreciation of just being able to have these early season rugby days and the April holiday festivals taking place again, with spectators allowed. There will also have been, one hopes, a bit of reflection and some realisation that, while everyone should be in it to win it, participation is in itself ...