Theo Garrun Talking Schoolboy rugby

  My sporting highlight of the week? …. It’s been rugby all the way and I got excited for various reasons, on Thursday already, about the Muir College vs Parktown game at Grey High, knowing that it was likely to be eclipsed as the long weekend unfolded. Then, on Friday night the Lions beat the Pumas in the Currie Cup. It’s always a highlight for me when they win these days, and that they stopped the defending champions made it more special. But the real stars this week were aways going to be the schoolboys and weren’t there some cracking games? Hilton holding out against nearly 10 minutes of ferocious attack from Michaelhouse to win 20-17 and extend their unbeaten run in the Midlands derby; and Jeppe scoring two tries in the final minute to snatch a draw against Selborne when the game looked gone for them, were two of them. At the Wildekalwer Festival in Kimberley where the big guns were playing, things went pretty much as expected, with no upsets. The Grey College vs Garsfon...

  Anyone watching the live streaming from the Standard Bank Grey High School Festival? I woke up this morning with a bit of FOMO – I used to go down there in my newspaper days – but thanks to SuperSport Schools you can watch the games from anywhere today – hasn’t that been a game-changer? So, I got to see Parktown Boys’ High play Muir College and there’s an early contender for my highlight of the week right there. It probably won’t get the final nod – not that my whimsical ramblings count for anything at all – there are just too many big games between now and Monday at Grey, and in Kimberley where the “super schools” will be in action at the Wildeklawer Festival. But, for me Parktown vs Muir was a significant encounter in a number of ways. First of all, it was played on the B field at the festival, which is actually Grey’s main cricket oval – The Pollock Field – certainly one of the most beautiful school grounds not to have the Western Cape mountains as its backdrop. I’ve w...

  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...

  My school sports highlight of the weekend? …. The rugby festivals, obviously.   Everything about them, really, but in particular, for me, seeing some familiar faces, men and women who have spent much of their lives in service of sport at schools. There are too many to list them all, but I know there will be no offence taken if I’ve left someone out. I spoke of the guys in the KES Festival office the other day, Derron van Eeden, Neil Darroch and Ian Sim – people with weighty jobs over the festival weekend – but always gracious and courteous in all their dealings with everyone. And while I was at KES I saw Tinus Diedericks, the Golden Lions Schools Rugby chairman, Brad Ireland and Ian Rickelton, long-termers at St David’s, Hans Coetzee – a rugby coaching legend in these parts, and from the school cricket world, Niels Momberg, who is commentating on SuperSport Schools. Down the road at St John’s, I had a word with Arnold Geerdts, who has been the announcer there for the last 15...

  I’ve been at more of these Easter Rugby festivals than most. I don’t know of many who have been around longer than me and I’d have to go back to the 1980s when the Saints Festival was the only show in town to recall a day like Saturday at the Standard Bank King Edward Easter Festival.   I asked around and no-one could tell me if there was a record crowd in (the ticket sales reconciliation will only be done later on), but it seemed that way to me. I couldn’t see how any more people could have been squeezed in. Someone (one of those long-term volunteers I spoke about on Thursday) asked me afterwards if KES vs Paarl Boys’ High was a good game – he couldn’t see a thing from where he was standing, he told me. He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get anywhere near the field, I’d wager.   Then there was the rugby, particularly the last four games of the day. For me, there were two things that I particularly loved about them: the refusal of the underdogs to lie down; and the qua...

  The Easter festivals on the go at St Stithians, St John’s and King Edward at the moment don’t happen by accident. The planning for the next year’s event typically starts the week after this year’s event ends. In fact, I’m sitting this week in the organisation’s offices at King Edward’s and I’ve been hearing the indefatigable and ever-cheerful festival organiser, Derron van Eeden, talking about next year all the time. The schools are already beginning to accept their invitations for 2024, which will be KES’s 20 th festival. There’s an army at work in and around the organiser’s office. Some are new faces to me, but most I’ve been seeing every time for years. They are all volunteers, their sons all long gone from the school, and yet they stick their hands up every year, and it’s them that have made the festival a long-term success story. As I walked down Oak Avenue on the first morning I heard whistles blowing on the rugby field and hockey Astro, which meant the boys were playi...

  Forgive me for repeating myself (again), but the great thing for us lovers of schoolboy rugby is that, for the last 30-odd years, the same thing happens every Easter weekend. The cream of the rugby playing schools are in action in Joburg, or down at Kearsney College, in one of the Standard Bank Festivals and there is a glut of fascinating matchups in prospect. So, like last year, I am cherry-picking the games I’d really like to see and going on a fantasy trip around the various venues, imaging I work on the Starship Enterprise and that dear old Scotty has the power to beam me up, down and sideways, and even backward and forward in time, so that I’d be able to see: On Thursday. Paarl Boys’ High against Selborne. Booizhaai are at KES for the 1 st time and it’s an opportunity to see a team that’s never outside of the top three in the land. Selborne are one of the top teams in the Eastern Cape and it would be good to see if they can match the WP powerhouse. Then I’ll ask Scott...