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Every team is important too

 

Jeppe 3rd vs Benoni High 1st


One of the criticisms of professionally run school rugby programmes is that they absorb so much of the available funding in the school and channel it into the 1st team, and the other A teams, that there’s little over to fund the rest of the programme.

It happens in keeping with the ethos that winning games is the whole point of the exercise. Wins mean ranking points on the weekly published lists that are so popular with just about everyone except me – and no one cares what I think.

There are different ways of measuring success and, unfortunately, the performance of the 1st rugby team is regarded as one of the most significant. School rugby teams have come along in leaps and bounds. The top coaches employed by the elite schools have introduced cutting edge skills and tactical techniques, supported by science-based physical preparation, nutrition, sports psychology etc. All of that costs money and it has undoubtedly resulted in standards of play that are unrecognisably better than they were in the old teacher-coach “amateur” days.

Undoubtedly there are some schools who spend their money on all of the above and neglect the other rugby teams, and other sporting codes, but certainly not all. I’ve been a school sports reporter for over 30 years and in my experience the good schools are good at everything they do. And, as with everything, it comes down to leadership.

It’s the principal’s job to insist that the elite teams in the school are coached and prepared to a standard that allows them to be competitive against the best of their opponents (not to insist that they must win). But it’s also his/her job to create an environment that is ethical, educational and allows for the growth and development of all the pupils in the school.

There are school leaders, I’m afraid, who aren’t doing their job. They allow all sorts of things to go in which aren’t ethical and educational and then they try to excuse their actions by pointing out that the funding of their programmes come from somewhere else – from old boys, trust funds, wealthy benefactors, etc – the answer to that is that whatever goes on in the name of the school is their responsibility.

Thankfully, there are many who do their best to fulfil their mandate, often with great success. Because I’m so tired of whingeing about these things I want to look at some examples of those that I’ve come across in the past few weeks.

They show, in these particular instances, that there are elite rugby schools who go to a lot of effort to ensure that every rugby player, down to those in the lowest age group teams are coached, and that they play competitive games, every week.

When those sorts of schools play each other, and they will typically field 20 or more teams on a Saturday, everyone gets a game against the same opponents. This past weekend Grey College played Affies with 21 rugby teams, and Jeppe sent 20 teams by bus to Northwood in Durban. All 21 Grey teams played against Affies. But Northwood could only field 16 sides, so the other four Jeppe sides played teams from Pinetown Boy’s High – Es against As; 5ths and 6ths against 1st and 2nd – at some effort and expense because those boys weren’t hosted by Northwood so Jeppe had to find them a place to stay on Friday night.

On the same day, KES played St John’s, who can only field 14 teams these days. Fortunately, however, Pretoria Boys’ High were up against St Alban’s, who can’t match them for numbers, so they sent three teams to Houghton, and hosted two KES teams as part of their St Alban’s matchday  programme.

Benoni High School, who find themselves in a bit of a rugby desert on the East Rand, are admirably willing to fill in gaps – they played six games against KES as part of the KES vs Parktown fixture, and seven Benoni teams were part of a joint St David’s/Benoni fixture with Jeppe.

Get my point? In all of the above, the first teams and A age group teams were well catered for. If that was all that mattered, the easy thing would have been to give the others the weekend off and have an early Saturday. Instead, the schools willingly plunged into a logistical nightmare, and made money available for extra transport costs and paid student coaches and referees fees, just so that all their boys could get a game.

If as a school you are going to allocate five or six coaching personnel to your first rugby team, build and maintain a  gymn, feed them special meals, bring in consultants and - dare I say it -  cast out a money-gobbling recruitment net,  you'd better be sure that you look after the Es, Fs, 5th and 6ths too.

 

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