Skip to main content

The Easter festivals were great, but it's too much rugby for the boys

 


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 generosity. I was aware of just one contentious issue – Jeppe played their second team against Eldorainge in their first outing. There were, it seems those who felt they were being precious, and disrespectful towards their hosts and opponents.

There was a communication breakdown, apparently, that led them to be included in the schedule for all three days, but they say they only intended to play two games from the very beginning, just as they did in 2019, at the last festival. KES, by the way, were also only down for two games then as well. And Eldoraigne were consulted and agreed to play against the Jeppe seconds, so there was no disrespect towards them.

In the excitement of being back we seem to have forgotten that in 2019, and before that already, there was talk around the wisdom of asking 18 year-olds to play three very competitive games over five days. In that year, like in this one, Easter fell in term-time for the State schools. That meant, with the customary early-season festivals, and normal Saturday fixtures on the Saturdays before and after Easter, schools were playing way too many games in a short period of time.

Jeppe, if they had fulfilled the proposed schedule at KES, will have played nine games in just over a month. That just not right. And they weren’t the only ones who opted for fewer games at the weekend. At St John’s Paul Roos Gimnasium only played twice, and Affies just once, and Paarl Boys’ High apparently agreed to three games only if the first was an “easy” one – they played the Golden Lions XV, and won 83-0.

I think we had schools agreeing to play three games this year, even though they were talking about cutting it down to two even before the Covid break. Everyone’s just so happy to be playing again and, at the time that invitations were accepted no-one was really sure that we would have a full season again, so they committed to playing as much as they can – it will probably not be the same next Easter.

I got the impression that, by 2019, people were getting a little tired of the concept of Easter festivals already. Gone are the days when all the top schools are clamouring to get into one of them. They have been replaced as the really prestigious events by the Noord-Suid and Wildeklawer gatherings, both of which feature two games per school.

Of the last top 10 in the rankings that came out in 2021 four schools – Grey College, Paarl Gimnasium, Outeniqua and Garsfontein weren’t at an Easter festival.

Easter 2022 has come and gone, and it was glorious, I don’t think, however, that 2023 and the future will be quite the same.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lots to enthuse about last week

It’s going to be tough deciding on a single highlight of the week gone by, so can I list a couple of what we used to call “briefs” in my newspaper days instead? It’s really about looking out for “gee, that was nice” moments in the area of school sport, mainly, and there were quite a few last week. Peta Kaplan turned 70, and she has been a swimming administrator for most of those years. She ran primary school swimming in Joburg when I met her and then became involved in Usassa and later the Gauteng Education Department as a sports development officer. She drove the agenda of transformation and accessibility to all, hard, which many of those who were running the sport at school level, me included, found uncomfortable. But she was right, of course. She has dedicated her life to sport for children and to swimming in particular. She is a tiny woman but also a giant. Happy birthday Pete. Jeppe put 670 boys and 75 teachers on 15 busses and sent them to Durban to compete against Westvill...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's rugby trials time, and I don't miss the cold

  My school sporting highlight of the week? It’s more a time of year, rather than an event, and I love it because of the memories it stirs: provincial rugby selection season. When the first chills of winter begin to bite, as they have this week, you know the Craven Week trials are on. I spent 10 years on those selection panels and the one consistent memory of those times is that it was bloody cold. On a typical U18 trials day the final game will kick off at around 5.30pm – sunset – and you’d have been on the side of the field in places like Alberton, or Krugersdorp, or, worst of all at UJ, deep in the valley and next to the Westdene Dam, all afternoon, steadily cooling down. We’d whinge, but I used to look forward to it all year, and from year to year.   It wasn’t easy. Trials are definitely not the best way to pick a team and, as the years passed, the task was made more difficult because racial quotas had to be met – it’s much worse now. And you’ll never please everyone...
Post a Comment
Read more

Another derby, another great day, much like the last one

  Much of what I’m going to say here I said last year this time. That sort of repetition used to be a no-no, back when I was newspaper reporter. But I’m not one anymore, and what I experienced on Saturday at the King Edward VII School vs Jeppe High School for Boys rugby derby at KES was so similar to what happened at Jeppe in April last year, that you really couldn’t tell the story differently this time around. Anyone who was there – and anyone else in Joburg who might have wanted to go to the game wouldn’t have found a spot to watch it from any way – was treated to the same spectacle; a riot of colours (mainly red), a cacophony from the stands and, on the field, the same passion and commitment and skills levels. Those skills, admittedly were less than perfectly executed at times, but if you are going to hold that against those 17 and 18-year olds, under that pressure, in that cauldron, then you were obviously not one of the 9 000-odd people shoe-horned into the school on Satur...
Post a Comment
Read more