Queen's unexpected win was the highlight of a great school rugby week

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 Garsfontein encounter was great to watch, however. The undisputed number one school in the land up against the upstarts, who clearly hadn’t read the script beforehand and pushed them hard for three quarters of the game before succumbing, 23-9, to individual brilliance and two late tries.

But, for sheer drama, the highlight of them all has to be Queen’s College’s 21-19 win over King Edward VII School at Grey. Queen’s were thrashed by Jeppe on Thursday and no-one (me too) expected them to trouble the Reds too much. But they did. They used the second half wind at their back to keep the pressure on and took the few chances they had.

Did you see, on the live streaming, the Queen’s coach go down under the weight of his players mobbing him after the final whistle? It showed what it meant to them. Lovely. I hope he is OK. I met him in the Festival office at KES over Easter and everyone in there agreed that he is the nicest man, effusively grateful that his team was there at all.

Queen’s will always be welcome at KES, was the impression I got. A rematch on Easter Monday 2024?

Comments

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...

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...

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...

Theo Garrun Talking Schoolboy rugby

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